Tag: Biblical Stewardship

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The Kingdom Demand for Integrity

Summary of my sermon, based on Luke 16:14-18. Preached at Greenhills Christian Fellowship Toronto on Good Friday – April 26, 2026.

In the preceding verses of Luke 16, Jesus teaches His disciples about the proper way to steward resources, culminating in a definitive truth: “You cannot serve God and money.” This absolute statement immediately triggers a confrontation with the religious establishment, setting the stage for a devastating critique on what it means to have true integrity as a redeemed people.

The Root of the Ridicule
Luke 16:14 states, “The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him.” This gives us direct insight into why the Pharisees constantly bumped up against Jesus. The word used for “ridiculed” is severe; it is the exact same word translated as “scoffed” to describe the crowds mocking Jesus while He lay on the cross. The Pharisees were scoffing because they were trying to “have their cake and eat it too”—they wanted to serve God while holding onto their desire for money.

The Devastating Reality of Pretend Righteousness
Jesus’s response to their scoffing is absolutely devastating, yet He does not even mention money. Instead, He addresses the wider issue of kingdom integrity: “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts” (Luke 16:15).

The main problem of the Pharisees is that they are attempting to appear more righteous than they really are in front of the people around them. As Jesus declares in Matthew 23, they are like “whitewashed tombs.” Just as a cemetery might look beautiful on the outside—with neatly cut grass and clean tombstones—underneath the surface, it is full of dead flesh and decomposing bones. The Pharisees looked beautiful on the outside, but God saw the rotten decay at their core.

They performed this pretend righteousness solely to receive the praise of the people around them. Jesus calls this purpose “an abomination in the sight of God.” An abomination is not just a minor misstep; it is the complete opposite of what is acceptable to God. Saying and doing the right things in public is not enough if the heart remains untouched.

A New Era of Salvation
In verses 16 and 17, Jesus outlines a shift in God’s story of salvation: “The law and the prophets were until John; since then, the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it.”

Since the very beginning of the need for salvation in Genesis 3 (the protoevangelium), God promised a Savior. Jesus’s arrival marks the fulfillment of that promise. The phrase “everyone forces his way into it” conveys the active acceptance required to enter the kingdom. It is a decision so radical—turning away from the things the world values, like money and public praise—that it requires forceful, decisive action.

However, this new era does not negate the moral law. Jesus clarifies, “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the law to become void.” The moral components of the law continue to reflect God’s holy character.

The Standard of Integrity
To prove His point that the moral law remains, Jesus makes what seems like a weird right turn by providing an example regarding divorce (verse 18). While this is not a comprehensive teaching on the subject—Matthew 19 expands on biblical exceptions such as sexual immorality, alongside other justified reasons like abuse or abandonment—He uses it to demonstrate that the Kingdom of God does not lower its moral expectations.

The Kingdom demand for integrity moves us past simple black-and-white, rule-based concepts. For instance, the New Testament standard for giving shifts from a strict 10% tithe to genuine generosity. The standard for morality aligns with Philippians 4:8: whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, and commendable.

Because our hearts are naturally “rotten to the core,” this standard is unattainable on our own. True righteousness is only possible through a transformation of the heart—a heart of stone replaced with a heart of flesh—accomplished entirely through the saving work of Christ on the cross.

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Trusted with Little, Trusted with Much

Summary of my sermon, based on Luke 16:1-13. Preached at Greenhills Christian Fellowship Toronto on March 22, 2026.

In Luke 16, as Jesus continues His journey toward Jerusalem, His focus begins to shift. Knowing His time on earth is drawing to a close, He delivers urgent, essential teachings to His disciples—similar to a king offering his final instructions. During this time, Jesus shares what is arguably one of His most difficult teachings: the Parable of the Dishonest Manager.

The story introduces a manager caught wasting his wealthy master’s possessions. The word used for “wasting” here is the exact same Greek word used to describe how the prodigal son squandered his inheritance. This manager has committed a fireable offense. Upon learning he is about to lose his position, the manager panics. Knowing he is not strong enough for manual labor and too proud to beg, he devises a shrewd plan to secure his future. He summons his master’s debtors and drastically reduces the amounts they owe.

At first glance, this action seems to be further theft. Why, then, does the master eventually commend the dishonest manager for his shrewdness? To understand this, we have to look at the cultural context of first-century debt. It is highly likely that this manager had been engaging in usury—charging exploitative, exorbitant interest rates, a practice strictly forbidden in the Old Testament. When he slashes the debts, he is likely not cutting into his master’s principal, but rather removing his own illegal, inflated interest. In a moment of desperation, he forsakes his worldly greed to build goodwill and secure a future for himself once he is fired.

Jesus is not praising the manager’s dishonesty; He is highlighting his shrewdness. Shrewdness simply means exercising judgment with a clear understanding of the consequences. Jesus makes a profound comparison: “For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light” (Luke 16:8, ESV). If worldly people exercise such deliberate judgment and urgency to secure their temporary, earthly futures, how much more should believers—the sons of light—exercise intentional judgment to secure eternal outcomes?

This brings us to Christ’s primary application regarding our attitude toward money. Jesus tells us to make friends by means of unrighteous wealth so that we may be welcomed into eternal dwellings. Wealth itself is morally neutral; it is simply a tool. However, the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Jesus is urging us to hold our wealth loosely. Instead of hoarding it or using it for reckless living, we are to be generous, using our worldly resources for eternal good—such as supporting evangelism and bringing people into the family of God.

Furthermore, this parable teaches the principle of faithful stewardship. Jesus states, “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much” (Luke 16:10, ESV). If we properly manage the resources God has given us, He can trust us with greater responsibilities. This is not the manipulative transaction taught by the prosperity gospel—where people give solely to receive a material blessing in return. True biblical stewardship means giving generously and cheerfully, recognizing that everything we have belongs to God.

Jesus concludes with an absolute truth: “No servant can serve two masters… You cannot serve God and money” (Luke 16:13, ESV). We must decide who sits on the throne of our hearts. Money is a terrible master, but it is a highly useful servant. Let us exercise true spiritual shrewdness, utilizing the time, resources, and wealth God has entrusted to us not to build a temporary earthly kingdom, but to invest deeply in the eternal kingdom of God.

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Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant

Summary of my sermon, based on Matthew 25:19-21. Preached at Greenhills Christian Fellowship Toronto on January 26, 2025.

This is the final message in our series on stewardship, and I want us to reflect on where we began. Back in Colossians 1:15–17, we saw that everything is God’s. Jesus is described as the firstborn of all creation—not meaning He was created first, but that He holds authority over everything. He’s supreme over all.

And when we understand that, it changes how we live. It changes how we see everything we have. There’s a wrong way to respond to this truth—idolatry. Worshiping the created things instead of the Creator. Or thinking we can bargain with God, trade with Him like we’re equals—“God, I’ll give you this if you give me that.” That’s ridiculous, because everything already belongs to Him. Romans 11 says, From Him and through Him and to Him are all things.

So we defined stewardship this way: bringing glory to God through the careful and responsible management of what He has entrusted to us. That includes our gifts, our time, our resources, our lives. And the key passage that shaped this whole series was 1 Peter 4:10–11. “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another… in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.”

Last week, we looked at Ecclesiastes 3 and Isaiah 46. The idea that time just “happens” to us doesn’t hold up when we realize God is the one directing it. He holds time in His hands. He’s sovereign over all of history and also the details of our lives. That challenged us to ask: are we stealing time from God? Are we giving too little? Or maybe giving too much, and neglecting the other good things He’s given us to enjoy?

So today, to close the series, we’re going to look at where stewardship is heading. And for that, we turn to the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25. Now, this parable is part of a much bigger section in Matthew where Jesus is teaching about His second coming. It’s His final discourse—His last big teaching block—and it begins with the disciples asking, “When will these things happen? What are the signs of your return?”

Jesus does answer that question. He talks about the signs—tribulation, the Gospel reaching all nations, the Abomination of Desolation—but then He says in Matthew 24:36 that no one knows the exact day or hour. Not the angels, not even the Son, but only the Father.

So Jesus shifts the focus. Instead of just looking for signs, He wants us to be ready. And that’s where our parable comes in. It’s a picture of a man going on a journey, entrusting his property to his servants—five talents to one, two to another, and one to another, each according to their ability.

Now let’s pause and talk about what a “talent” is. It’s hard to pin down. Some say it’s a large sum of money, others give dollar estimates that range from thousands to millions. But a safe estimate is to compare it to wages. If one talent is roughly two years’ wages, then we’re talking about $70,000 per talent, give or take. That means the one with five talents received about $350,000. The point is—it was a lot.

And this parable teaches us a few critical truths about stewardship. First, because it’s set in the context of Jesus’ return, we realize stewardship is eschatological. In other words, how we manage what God has given us is shaped by the fact that Jesus is coming again. We don’t know when, so we should live ready—always managing what we have with that day in mind.

Second, we see that each servant was given according to ability. That doesn’t mean the one with more is necessarily more capable. We see this in the world all the time—wealth passed down from previous generations, not always to people who know how to handle it. I shared the story of the Nut Rage incident in Korea. Someone with lots of wealth and power, clearly more than they could handle. So the point here is not how much we have, but what we do with what we’ve been given.

Because when we look at the two servants who invested their talents, the master’s commendation to both was exactly the same. “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much.” So God’s not looking for a certain amount of return. He’s looking for faithfulness.

But then there’s the third servant. The one who buried his talent. He had a distorted view of his master. “I knew you to be a hard man,” he said. And that fear led him to do nothing. And here’s what we need to see: a distorted view of God’s character will lead to unfaithfulness. It gives us excuses. But the master responds by calling him wicked and lazy. He didn’t expect a big return—but at the very least, he could have earned interest. But this servant didn’t even try.

That’s why knowing God’s character matters. And it’s why right doctrine matters. Because churches and believers who twist God’s character tend to stop being fruitful. We see that in churches that have embraced worldly ideologies. I mentioned one pastor who claimed Jesus would say, “Blessed are those who end pregnancies.” That’s a gross distortion of God’s heart, and that church has been rapidly shrinking for decades. Because you distort who God is, and people stop being transformed.

So what do we do about that? We gather kindling. Remember that from the first message? Kindling are the little pieces of wood that start the fire. We gather kindling when we read Scripture, pray, worship—those spiritual disciplines that help us know God.

And we do that in community. Growth happens in community. That’s why our church prioritizes Growth Groups. Hebrews 10 says we should stir one another up to love and good works—not neglecting to meet, but encouraging one another all the more as we see the Day approaching.

Now I know this is a different approach to stewardship. Most sermons on stewardship talk about money—about tithing. But stewardship is bigger than that. Tithing, especially the 10% rule, isn’t really a New Testament command. What God wants is generosity. 2 Corinthians 9:7–8 says each one should give what he’s decided in his heart—not under compulsion—for God loves a cheerful giver.

So the point of this whole series has been to give that bigger context. Stewardship isn’t just about what we put in the offering plate. It’s about how we live, because everything belongs to God—our time, our resources, our very lives.

And the more we know Him—the more we seek Him through His Word and through His people—the more faithfully we’ll steward what He’s entrusted to us. And then, when Christ returns, we will hear those beautiful words: Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master.