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Tag: stewardship

Good and Faithful Stewards

Today we come to the conclusion of our “Visual Theology” message series. We’ve been following the outline of Tim Challies and Josh Byers in their book “Visual Theology” as they look at the four basic pursuits of the Christian life.

These four things should be a part of every Christian’s experience.

  1. We should strive to grow close to Christ.
  2. We should strive to understand the work of Christ.
  3. We should strive to become like Christ.
  4. We should strive to live for Christ.

And I trust that over these past few months, you’ve been able to get a fresh understanding of why and how we do these things and hopefully, you’ve been able to pick up some real practical ways for how to live out those things out in your own life.

But we’re not quite done yet. We’ve got one more topic to tackle as we complete our final section of how we live for Christ.

And so I’d like to introduce one more new word to your vocabulary today: the word is stewardship

Now most of you will have heard of stewards or stewardess – they are the kind folks who take care of you in an airplane while you’re flying somewhere. They bring you drinks and snacks and tell you how to put on your seatbelt and how to exit in an emergency, and all of that good stuff.

But that picture of an airline steward doesn’t really give you an accurate understanding of what stewardship is all about. Stewardship is more than just being a waiter or someone’s personal butler. So to help us understand stewardship, I want to read for you a parable from Matthew 25.

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The Parable of the Three Servants

Did you had $100 in 1986? The reason I ask is because I was doing some figuring this week, and I found out that if you had taken $100 in 1986 and deposited it in the bank – the interest rates were about a 5¼% back then -so today, with the compound interest, that $100 would be worth $390.41. That’s an increase of nearly 300%. That’s not too bad, eh?

But then I thought, well, then instead of putting that money in the bank in 1986 – what if we had instead invested it in a reputable company – What if we had invested it in Ford? Well, if we had invested that same $100 in Ford in 1986, today it would be worth $716.38. That’s a little bit better isn’t it? As you see on our little bar graph chart, that’s nearly twice as much as you would have made from the bank. That would have been a much better investment.

Now I know that some of you don’t really appreciate Ford vehicles, so you’re not likely to invest with them. So let’s say instead that you invested in another big name company – General Electric. That same $100 invested in 1986 in General Electric would now be worth some $1552.13. That’s a 1400 percent increase! That’s twice as much as Ford, and four times as much as the bank. If only you had know this back in 1986.

But you know, both Ford and General Electric are pretty ‘safe’ companies. They’ve both been around for a long, long time – over a hundred years now. What if we had been a little more risky and invested in a company that had just formed only ten years prior to 1986? What if we had invested in Apple Computers Inc.? Are you ready for this? Well, believe it or not, that $100 invested in 1986 in Apple Computers Inc, would now be worth… over $45,000. $45,818.81 to be specific. That’s just from a little $100 dollar investment. Isn’t that incredible? If you had $100 in 1986 – you could have done that!

But let me give you just one more scenario.

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