The Stewardship of Life: Our Response to God

By Clarence Sexton

God is always previous. The stewardship of life is our response to God. I am happy that the Lord has allowed me to come to this season of life before writing a book on stewardship. My influence can be put to better use after nearly half a century of walking with the Lord and coming both to a greater knowledge of Him and to a better understanding of His way with us. I pray that this book makes a difference in your life and in the lives of New Testament churches.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781589816879

Book preview

Stewardship is our response to God.

CHAPTER ONE

THE STEWARDSHIP of LIFE

ate one evening, Dr. Lee Roberson and I were traveling back to his home in Chattanooga, Tennessee, when our conversation turned to the subject of death and eternity. I said to him, I’m not afraid to die. His response came in one word, Good.

Do I know for sure that heaven is my home for eternity? The answer is absolutely yes! The Eternal One lives in me. I am a present possessor of eternal life in Him. The Lord Jesus Christ is my personal Saviour.

Am I afraid to die? Let me put it this way: I am going to heaven to be with the Lord Jesus when I die, but I am not ready to meet God with the stewardship of my life.

God begins the subject of stewardship in the very first chapter of the Bible. Typically, when the word stewardship is mentioned, most people think of money. Of course, stewardship involves much more than money. Money is only one expression of our stewardship. It involves all our response to God in life. Our Creator begins with this subject in Genesis 1:

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and God saw that it was good.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. –

Genesis 1:24-31

Stewardship is our response to God.

Remember, our stewardship encompasses all of life. There is nothing you or I could imagine that stewardship does not include. In Genesis 1, we find God’s original intent. This is the way God intended life to be. Men have rebelled against God. The tragic story of man’s rebellion is found rooted in Genesis 3 as Adam and Eve sinned against God and sin entered into the bloodstream of all humanity.

The Bible says that we are sinners by conception. The psalmist wrote, In sin did my mother conceive me (Psalms 51:5). That statement was not an indictment against his mother, but rather a statement of fact that the human race is a sinful race. We are also sinners by choice and sinners by conduct. We live by our own devices. Isaiah 53:6 states, All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.

Apart from God, we make our own way; we have nothing to access for aid except our own imagination, our own wisdom, and the knowledge of this life apart from God. This is why God says we are to be reconciled to Him. That is why Jesus Christ came to earth. The Lord Jesus became a man without ceasing to be God. He bled and died for our sin, not His own. He paid our sin debt and satisfied the demands that God made for the sin payment. He was buried, then He rose from the dead, ascended on high, and He is alive evermore!

When we come to God in repentance and faith, we are reconciled to God. Christ comes to indwell us; the imputed righteousness of Christ is placed on our account. God sees us as He sees His own dear Son. II Corinthians 5:17 explains, Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. What God expects of those who have been reconciled to Him is that we follow His intent, just as He gave it in the Garden of Eden.

The Christian life is not a life that is a little better; it is completely different.

What does God intend for me? I am to live the way God intends for me to live. I cannot do that on my own or in my own strength, but I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me (Philippians 4:13). The Lord enables me.

Christ did not redeem us by His precious blood and say, For the rest of your days, until you take your last breath, you are on your own. On the contrary, He said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee (Hebrews 13:5). We are never alone. For anyone of God’s children to say, I cannot do this thing God desires of me! is to bring an indictment against God. It is saying, God is not able to do this. God is not able to make me able. But the Bible teaches that God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think (Ephesians 3:20).

I have said often that I am not afraid to die because I know heaven is my home. I am as certain of heaven right now at this moment as I will be when I am there. I know that when the time comes for me to die that God will be with me. He will extend a measure of grace that will see me through. In every trial He has been there to give me that measure of grace to see me through—not just to squeeze me through like pulling something through a knothole, but to give me an abounding grace that is sufficient to provide a wonderful spiritual experience to go through it with God.

Have you been reconciled to God? God does not have to be reconciled to us, because He has never done anything wrong. But have you been reconciled to God? Have you asked God to forgive your sin and by faith come to know Christ as your personal Saviour? Have you made peace with God? We are enemies with God apart from Christ, and we are lost in our sin. Do you have the peace of God that comes from abiding in Him and obeying Him? If so, God has an expectation for you. This is where we begin with the stewardship of life.

GOD HAS CREATED US to BE CO-LABORERS WITH HIM

God has created us to be co-laborers with Him. The apostle Paul made a wonderful statement to the Corinthians in I Corinthians 3:9, saying, For we are labourers together with God. This reveals God’s purpose.

When we are reconciled to God through the precious blood of Jesus Christ our Saviour, when our sin debt has been forgiven and Christ comes to live in us, we become new creatures in Christ Jesus. God does not expect us to compare ourselves with the unbelieving world. The Christian life is not a life that is a little better; it is completely different. We have been restored to Him, and we are reconciled to Him. He is our Father and we are His children. He is our Creator, and we recognize that He has created us to be laborers together with Him. Notice again Genesis 1:24–27, which says,

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and God saw that it was good.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

God’s original intent in creating man was that man would accomplish what God wants done in this world.

God said in verse twenty-six, Let us make man in our image. God declared in verse twenty-seven, So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him. God made us so that we can communicate with Him and so that He can communicate with us.

My wife and I have been married for many years, and we are grateful to God for one another. We have wonderful communication in our marriage. If we could not communicate one with another, it would be difficult for us to know each other in any true and meaningful way.

Our Lord, in His own unique way with human beings, above plant life and animal life, designed in the creation of mankind the ability to communicate not only with other people, but also with God He designed man so that God could communicate with man!

As we speak of prayer, we are speaking about communication with God. In that sense, our prayer life is our Christian life. God created man not only so that we could communicate with Him, but also so that we could labor together with God. This is why we must place such great emphasis on what God wants done in this world. God’s original intent in creating man was that man would accomplish what God wants done in this world.

Is my life given to God’s will? In other words, I am to give myself completely, all inclusively, to what God is doing in the world. This enables me to discover our Lord’s design.

A man by the name of Matthew Maury died in 1873. Forty years before he died, he was in a stagecoach accident and was crippled for the rest of his life. Mr. Maury was greatly interested in oceanography. He read the following in Psalm 8:1-9:

O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

As a true Christian, when Matthew Maury read the expression, the paths of the sea, it opened his understanding to the fact that there were paths in the sea, just as there are rivers through the land. Those rivers are really roads that people traveled, waterways by which people moved from one place to another. Most early cities were built along rivers because those rivers were the first roadways and highways in the land.

Maury understood from the Bible that in the seas God had designed pathways. When he first began to work with this, it took 187 days to travel from California to New York by sea. But this man discovered paths in the sea—currents that God had created. He began to explore where those currents were.

His background as a naval officer aided in his discovery of those currents. He mapped the seas, just as one would map land. By mapping the seas he enabled shipping vessels to take those paths in the seas, and the time from California to New York was reduced from 187 days of travel by ship to 110 days. (This, of course, is only one example.)

Now someone might stand back and say, That is amazing, isn’t it? It is amazing. He was an amazing man, a crippled man for the last forty years of his life. An amazing mind! you say. Yes, an amazing mind. But more than an amazing man with an amazing mind, he was a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ who recognized that God created us to labor together with God, and that his task was to discover what God was doing and what He had done in the world. This is how he discovered the paths in the sea. What wonderful discoveries God has for His children.

When we are considering the stewardship of life, we are not alone. Just as God walked in the cool of the day and cried out to Adam (they had visited often in the Garden, no doubt, before sin came and separated them), God desires to visit with us, to guide us, to show us His way, to give us His understanding, and to let us know what He is up to in this world. He wants to engage us to be laborers together with Him. Think how this heightens and magnifies the work we do when we come to understand that we are laboring together with God.

In the Gospel according to Matthew, the Lord Jesus gave the parable concerning the talents. He said,

And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey. Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents. And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two. But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money.

After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them. And so he that received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more. His lord said unto him, Well done thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. – Matthew 25:15-17

What is the joy of thy lord? It is more work! The man works and invests the talents and enlarges the investment. God does not say to him, Now go over there and sit down and rest. God said to him, Now you have more work to do. Laboring together with God encourages us to labor even more with God.

You and I need to understand that God wants His work done in this world, and He created us (once we are redeemed and reconciled back to Him) to labor with Him and to do His work. When we prove faithful in one area, He enlarges our stewardship so that we work in more areas with Him.

Consider how this principle changes our view of possessions. Why do you have a job, or a house, or health, or friends with whom to associate? This is all encompassing—everything is involved in the stewardship of life.

We are to recognize that everything is to be used in His work for His glory. Romans 14:7 says, No man liveth unto himself, and no man dieth unto himself. We are laborers together with God. This is the foundation of the stewardship of life.

GOD HAS MADE US STEWARDS OVER HIS POSSESSIONS

We own nothing. It all belongs to God. The Lord said in Genesis 1:26,

Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

God made this big, beautiful world and said to man, I put you in it. What are you going to do with it? What are you going to do in the world? We should desire to do what God has designed to be done. For example, what is God’s design with men, women, and marriage? What is God’s design with children? Did you know that being the right kind of husband or wife and understanding the institution of marriage is a part of