Reading:
1 Cor. 4:1-2; 1 Cor. 9:17; Titus 1:7-8; Col. 1:25; 1 Tim.
1:4.
The
subject of our meditation is to be that of stewardship. A
steward is a man who, on the one hand, stands in a living
relationship to all that his Lord has, and, on the other
hand, in an equally close relationship to all who look to
his Lord for the supply of their needs, or to receive
somewhat of His bounty. So that the steward is a very
responsible person. He is responsible for the reputation
of his master. What the world knows of his master will
very largely accord with what the steward is, and what
the world or the household receives of enrichment and
good, will depend very much upon him. That is a very
simple illustration, but that, and very much more, is
what is bound up with this word "steward," or
"stewardship."
The
Apostle Paul spoke of himself as a steward, as having
been entrusted with a stewardship, and it is impressive
to note that he applies the term to the believers in the
Corinthian church or assembly. We can quite readily
understand and appreciate that Paul should be a steward,
but when he addresses the people in the Corinthian
assembly and says to them: "Let a man so account of
us, as of ministers of Christ, and stewards of the
mysteries of God" (1 Cor. 4:1), thus bringing them
all in, surely that is transferring the designation to
very ordinary believers. We cannot, therefore, evade the
issue by saying, Well, that applies to special people
like Paul! It clearly applies to ordinary people, like
the Corinthians and ourselves, and the exhortation is
that men should be able to regard us, to take account of
us as stewards.
The
Fact of Responsibility
That
speaks of something more than merely having a standing as
believers. We might perhaps think the world must take
account of us as Christians; they will do so in any case
if we make a profession! But this Divine thought takes us
much further. It brings us out into a place of specific
and definite responsibility in two connections; firstly,
to the Lord, binding up the Lord's interests with us in
an active way; secondly, in a like practical way, to man.
We are stewards, we stand in a place between, with a
responsibility in two directions.
The Lord's
people need to be reminded, from time to time, of the
fact of their responsibility. There is a tremendous
responsibility resting upon everyone who is related to
the Lord, because that relationship is never a passive
one, or ought never to be so. It is not the case that we
are just members of a family, and there the matter begins
and ends. Membership of the family, in the household of
faith, is but one phase of truth, of the teaching of the
Word of God. It has its own special meaning and value.
The fact that believers are called by a variety of
designations, and that the various designations seem to
counter one another, presents no actual conflict when it
is seen that they are but so many aspects of a whole, and
not mutually exclusive. For instance, in the case of
earthly relationships, for one to be a member of a family
would preclude one from being the steward of the
household but with the spiritual relationship it is not
so. We have to keep the family relationship in its own
place, to recognize that it brings its own responsibility
and obligations, and has its own meaning and value; but
with that in its place, you yet find yourself, in another
direction, in the position of a steward, where you come
into a great and specific responsibility. This holds good
of all. We are all called to be stewards: that is God's
thought for every one of us. Such an observation leads us
to one or two important considerations.
The
Qualification for Stewardship
A fact
which should be very helpful to us is that all the
Lord's dealings with us are with the design of making us
such stewards as it is required we should be. A
steward has to be qualified for his stewardship. A
steward must be a man of certain definite
characteristics. The fulfillment of his stewardship will
demand experience. He cannot step into a true spiritual
stewardship at will. There has to be a real preparation,
a real development, a real endowment for such a
stewardship. If you read carefully the connection in
Paul's mind between the stewardship and its fulfillment,
you will see that the connection is a very practical one,
a very active one, a very deep one. He was conscious of
the need of special enablement, special gifts, special
qualifications, and for such equipment he had to go
through special experiences. Stewardship is a matter of
training, and deep training at that.
In order
to make us able stewards, the Lord takes us into many
different kinds of experiences; into extraordinary,
unusual experiences; into such a variety of experiences
as come to none but His Own people. No one else goes
through quite the same variety of experiences. There are
features about the experiences of God's people which are
uncommon. Other people in the world may go through
certain sufferings which are seemingly like the
sufferings of believers: they may know the difficulty of
poverty, the difficulty of maintaining their position in
the world; outwardly there may be a similarity; but in
reality, on the inward side, there are elements
associated with the experiences of believers which are
not associated with the experiences of the world; theirs
are peculiar. They have factors of a spiritual character
associated with them, which are entirely foreign to the
ungodly, to the unbelieving. With the experience of a
believer there comes a challenge which does not come to
the unbeliever; there is a demand to be faced which in
the case of the world is not there. I believe that we go
through a great many things as the Lord's people which we
should never go through if we were not His people. It is
simply because we are the Lord's that we go that way. The
explanation is not merely that we have to face an enemy
when we take sides with the Lord. We have further to take
into account the fact that the Lord allows the enemy to
do what he does.
(1.)
An Experimental Knowledge of the Need
To what
end is this? We have already shown that what governs the
Lord in His dealings with us, His mysterious dealings,
His strange leadings, His unique permissions, is His
design of making us stewards. How do those things
accomplish such an end? A steward must know the needs of
the people to whom he is to minister. He must know of
their needs, and he must know the nature of their needs.
The man of God is not just an official. He is not someone
taken out of a crowd and put into office, and set a daily
task which can be learned by studying a manual. He has to
have a vital relationship with the whole position, and he
must know, in a living, experimental way, the nature of
the needs to which he has to minister. Between him and
those to whom he is to minister his Master's riches,
there must be a sympathy of heart by way of inward
understanding. He must know the variety of their needs,
for what he would give to one would never do for another;
what he might give to quite a number would be altogether
out of place to give to others. He will find, as the
physician finds, that no two cases are exactly alike,
because no two temperaments are exactly alike. A dozen
people may have the same complaint, but it may be needful
to treat each one differently, because of different
temperamental factors in each case. The true physician is
one who not only takes the complaint into account, but
the person who has the complaint. It is like that with
the steward. There has to be an understanding of the
need, of the situation; there must be a
heart-understanding, a sympathy.
The Lord
deals with us in order that we might be able to minister
in an apt way. His stewards are to be men of
understanding, who can touch the various needs, who can
reach the heart, so that the Lord's children are saying -
That just fits me! That touches my case! That person must
know! That one must have been through it! Who has been
telling him about me? Yes, the Lord knows, and He would
take you and me through experiences such as will make us
stewards in a living way: and that is what He is doing.
The steward must understand the universal needs, the
variety of needs, and must understand in a way that no
one can who merely studies from the outside. The Lord's
way of training His stewards is to take them THROUGHthings:
and who is better able to meet the need than the
One who has known that need Himself?
(2.)
An Experimental Knowledge of the Resource
Then the
steward has not only to understand the nature of the need
to be met, but he must have an equal knowledge of the
resources with which he is to meet it. He must know the
quality of that which is at his command, the nature of
it, the values that are in it. Here again, we can never
know the values of the things of God unless we have gone
through experiences in which we have put them to the
test, and proved them. No one really knows the value of
Divine things who has not proved their value in his own
life.
The
stewardship of the Gospel is something more than our
seeing the Gospel of the grace of God in the New
Testament, as a system of truth, as something which
embraces in a formula certain matters such as forgiveness
of sins, justification by faith, and all the other
elements of the Gospel: it is something more than that.
The stewardship of the Gospel implies that the Gospel has
become wrought into the very being of the steward, and
that the steward himself is rejoicing in it. Such a
steward can come out of the treasure house and meet the
household, and meet those beyond, and say: I have
something here of tremendous value; I am rejoicing in it
myself; I know it, and I can assure you I am not giving
you something that has simply been taken hold of and
passed on apart from experience; it is not something that
is the result of my studies, gleanings from other minds,
what the commentators and "authorities" say. I
am up-to-date in my personal knowledge and benefit of
this matter.
What is
true of the Gospel is true of the many-sided mysteries of
God. That is another stewardship of which Paul speaks.
You and I are led into the mysteries of God, into the
depths, to discover those secrets, in order that we may
come out with the treasures of darkness. Ah, but what
darkness it is while we are there! No treasures seem to
abound in the darkness. All seems death, and desolation.
Poverty and starvation seem to rein. But to come out with
the treasures of darkness, TREASURESof
darkness, constitutes stewardship. Stewards are men and
women who have been through the dark, and have discovered
treasures and have the treasures of darkness to pass on.
(3.)
Faithfulness
How much have you to
dispense? Are you sure that you are dispensing what you
have? The Lord did not lead you through that trial,
through that darkness, through that strange experience,
just for your own sake. The Lord has not dealt with you
as He has, in order that you should be shut up to
yourself, to enjoy the result alone. He has done that to
constitute you a steward. If you and I will only allow
that fact to govern us in the days of difficulty and
trial, it will help us through. We should hold fast to
the fact that the trial is to mean enrichment for the
Lord's people, and an increase of equipment and
qualification for stewardship. There are so many who have
a measure of spiritual wealth and are not making it
available for others; others are not getting the benefit
of it. They have a knowledge of the Lord that has come
through experience, and if only they would get alongside
of others, those others would get some of the good of the
Lord's dealings with them, would be blessed, and
enriched. Ask the Lord to release you into your
stewardship within your measure. We are not speaking of
an official, organized service for God, where you have to
be continually ministering to others, whether you have
the resources with which to do it or not. That is all
false, and puts strain upon you; you may well revolt
against that kind of thing. We simply have in mind the
way in which the Lord creates living contacts. Children
of God may cross your path in dire need, and may all the
time be looking for the person who can help them. They
have been crying to the Lord to meet the need, and have
been watching to see how the Lord would answer. They may
cross your path, and you talk upon all sorts of ordinary
things; they pass on their way, and you have failed in
your stewardship. They have not received that for which
they have been asking, and the steward has disappointed
the Lord, and those who were looking to the Lord. Let us
ask the Lord to give us release from our tied-up state,
to fulfill this stewardship.
The Lord's Word is:
"...it is required in stewards, that a man be found
faithful," not eloquent, intellectual, with a strong
personality, none of those things. What is your mental
conception of a steward? One who has a great facility of
speech, who finds no difficulty in talking? No!
"...it is required in stewards, that a man be found FAITHFUL." I believe that the greatest virtue in the eyes of God
is faithfulness; it embraces everything. Faithfulness is
after God's own heart.
Take a passing glance
at this steward - Paul the Apostle. "Demas forsook
me..."; (2 Tim. 4:10); "...all that are in Asia
turned away from me..." (2 Tim. 1:15). Look at him
when everything which would inspire to faithfulness is
breaking down. He is left practically alone. He has more
enemies than ever. And now the tragedy, the pathos is
that so many of his enemies are those to whom he has been
most used. While there were enemies without it was not so
difficult, but now the very people for whom he has spent
himself have become his enemies. But there is no thought,
no hint, no suggestion of giving up. His word is,
"...faithful unto death..." This steward was
faithful. You cannot say that, when he died, the
situation outwardly testified to tremendous success. It
did not look like that at all. Paul's life was not
vindicated up to the hilt. No! He died largely a lonely
man, but faithful. "...it is required in stewards,
that a man be found faithful." But what enrichment
of others may follow from the meeting of that
requirement, costly as it is. Paul is not dead! I only
hope that Paul knows of all that has sprung from his
ministry, all that his ministry means to us. The Lord has
met us through His servant, and we never, never get to
the depths or anywhere near the bottom of the fullness of
Christ that has come through Paul. We shall go on, and,
if we live twice or three times the length of our present
life, we shall still be making discoveries of what we owe
to Paul's faithfulness as a steward. That has been going
on century after century.
That is faithful
stewardship, and although the steward may be called away
from his earthly stewardship, the stewardship goes on.
Faithfulness is always rewarded beyond our wildest
dreams. May the Lord maintain us in faithfulness, even
though that faithfulness may sometimes involve us in an
appearance of utter failure. The Lord make us good
stewards.