Home > Sermons > Author > Stowell, Joseph
Jesus the Revolutionary: Implications for Christ-Centered Stewardship
By Joseph Stowell
 Joseph Stowell is a former pastor and president of Moody Bible
Institute in Chicago. He preached this sermon at the annual Generous Giving
Conference, Phoenix Ariz., March 1-3, 2001.
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More money has been made in the decade of the 1990s in America than we’ve ever
dreamed of. It is truly unbelievable. In fact, many of us are victims of that
blessing. We think about ourselves as quite successful. My problem is that I often think
we get our definitions confused. Life is lived by the definitions, and if you don’t have the
definitions straight, then you don’t get life.
God’s Definition of Success
I think it would be interesting to let God define “success.” When it comes to God’s
definition, success is not found in what I have. From God’s point of view, success is
found in what I have done with what I have. There is a huge difference between those
two things. By way of introduction, I want to cite three biblical references that bring this
home. Daniel 5 tells the story about Belshazzar, the wealthy, highly applauded
Babylonian politician of his day, who throws a great banquet. At this marvelous dinner,
suddenly God shows up and writes a message on the wall, which Daniel is brought in to interpret.
Daniel reads the writing: Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin. He says, “The Mene
means God has numbered your kingdom and put it to an end.” It reminds me of
the biblical passage, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of
wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). “Peres,” Daniel continued, “means your kingdom has
been divided and given over to the Medes and Persians.” This reminds me of how much
money the government will get from you when you die—the Medes and Persians of
Washington, D.C. The one that troubles me the most is what God said to this wealthy,
successful politician when Daniel translated Tekel: “You have been weighed in
the balance and found wanting.” I don’t ever want to hear God say that to me, and I
doubt you do either.
Scripture also records an interesting commentary on the religious men of
Jesus’ day, the Pharisees. Jesus says the Pharisees were lovers of money, and he said
to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows
your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight” (Luke
16:15b). That’s a scary thought, isn’t it? How easy it is to live our lives in the applause
of the crowd, to run our lives and manage our money according to earth-side principles.
God might look at that and say that which “is highly valued among men is detestable in
God’s
sight.” Think about Jesus’ admonition: “From everyone who has been given much, much
will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will
be asked” (Luke 12:48b). What we are really talking about here is accountability to God.
An Illustration
Picture yourself totally alone in a room. In that room is a table with
everything you have upon it - everything. Nothing stays under the table or in
the closet. It’s all there. You hear a knock on the door, go to the door, you open it up,
and guess who’s standing there? It’s Jesus. He wants to come in. Obviously we are
going to let him in, right? So you let Jesus in, shut the door behind him, and he looks
at everything on your table.
Do you feel a little threatened by that? You ought to. If you see Jesus as
merely a comfortable, cuddly, encouraging companion for life and have never seen
Jesus as a threat, then you have never met the authentic Jesus of Scripture. As soon as
he walks in that room where you and he and all of your things are, he demands to be
in control. That is what is threatening about him. You say, “I’ll just hire him as a
consultant; that’s what I’ll do. I’m going to make Jesus the consultant of all my
success.” He doesn’t hire out as a consultant. He walks in as the chairman of the board.
He walks in as the commander-in-chief. He wants to rearrange what’s on your table, so
that you can be pleasing in his sight and give a good account to him.
I’d like to move through three cameos of the gospels where we see Jesus in
action, that really bring out what he would say to us about all that we have and all that
we are, as well as the definition of true success.
Becoming ‘Net-less’ Fishers of Men
The first cameo is in Matthew 4:18-22. Here we read that Jesus was walking by the sea,
and he saw two fishermen, Andrew and his brother Peter. Standing on the shore, Jesus
called out to them, “Come, follow me ... and I will make you fishers of men.” The
primal call of authentic Christianity is this call. It is first and it is foremost. If I were to
ask you, “Tell me a little bit about your religious affiliations.” You might say, “I’m a
Presbyterian” or “I’m a Baptist” or “I’m an Episcopalian.” Maybe you’d want to get more
generic and say, “I’m a Christian,” or “I’m a believer.” I’ll tell what our identity is. If
somebody says, “Tell me about your religious affiliation,” how refreshing it is to hear
somebody say, “I’m a follower of Jesus; I’m a follower of Christ.” That’s what we are.
When Jesus Christ said, “Follow me,” he used the Greek word that literally means “to
come after me.” If you translate his words that way, then what it really means is that
Jesus is the passionate pursuit of your life.
What is the passionate pursuit of your life? Is Jesus the answer to that? Is he
all-consuming? Is he what drives you? Is he what forms and frames your desires? Is
your life about pursuing him? A lot of times Jesus is just one of the things in my life
orbiting around me, functioning as the 9-1-1 number of my life. Yet when Jesus
said “Follow me,” he meant that he would be the point of gravity in your life. He would
be at the center of your universe. You and all that you have revolve around him and are
dictated by him. That is what it means to follow Christ.
I just want to parenthetically say there may be some reading this message
who like the ring of this sort religiously, but they are unsure about making Jesus their
ultimate hero. I think we’re influenced by the pictures we’ve painted of Jesus—the
Sunday school pictures or things hanging on the wall where Jesus seems to be
demurring, merciful, kind, retiring, unthreatening, etc. You’d like to have him as a
Savior, but you’d never like him to run your business. We need to see Jesus in light of
Scripture. No one who ever met Jesus face to face felt that way. Look at the disciples. In
Matthew 4, the men Jesus called were fishermen, rough and rugged guys, the truck
drivers of their day. When they encountered Christ, they looked into his eyes and were
compelled when he said, “Follow me.” They gave up everything to follow Christ. Think of
Matthew the tax collector, or Simon the Zealot. When you encounter the authentic
Christ, you have to be compelled to put him at the center, to pursue him. It will be the
joy of your life, for he is worthy.
Jesus said to his disciples, “Come, follow me ... and I will make you fishers of
men.” I like the sequence here. Many of us first say that we’re going to make
something of our lives and let Jesus come along. This is a backward way of thinking.
Jesus says you come along and let him make something of your life. Do you see the
difference? It’s huge. We follow him and let him make something of our lives. This is a
radical shift in perspective because now all of life is no longer about me. It’s no longer
about my portfolio, it’s no longer about my success or my business, and it’s no longer
about anything except the lost. It’s about the eternal needs of people. It’s about
rescue: “I will make you fishers of men.” This is catching. This is redemptive. This is
taking people all the way to the cross and changing their lives radically and eternally, through the power of Jesus Christ. If you are his follower, then he wants to do that to
your life, to make you a fisher of men. The accountability point of this cameo is that God
will hold you accountable not only for your cash but for your catch if you are his follower.
I think there are some ramifications about this point of accountability, that at
the end of day Jesus measures success not in cash but in the catch. There are a lot of
wealthy Christians who give a lot of money away. They give half of it to the opera. I
once read a paper that made a powerful argument for Christians giving solely to
Christian causes, giving to the catch. The world will delight in supporting its own stuff,
but very few pagan dollars are moving into the kingdom—very few, if any. I need to
measure the significance of my cash by its relationship to the catch.
Peter and Andrew didn’t try to negotiate. When Jesus Christ came and
threatened their whole lives, their whole careers, their 401(k) plans, they dropped their
nets immediately and followed Christ. The problem with us is those nets, isn’t it? Be
honest. It’s those nets we keep hanging on to—nets of our dreams, nets of our plans,
nets of our own pride in what we have, nets of prestige, nets of control. We all have
nets, but authentic followers of Christ are “net-less” believers. Drop those nets. Let him
cut the weight and take all that you are and all that you have when you follow him. We
come to Jesus with nothing in our hands. We drop our nets and follow him.
A Measure of True Success
The second cameo is about accountability in terms of our own success. In Luke 12:13-
21, somebody in a crowd catches the attention of Christ and says, “Teacher, tell my
brother to divide the inheritance with me.” If you get one chance to talk to Christ, at
least ask something other than that! Jesus used it as a teaching opportunity, telling
the man, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not
consist in the abundance of his possessions.” In case they didn’t get it, Jesus told the
story about a wealthy man who had become so wealthy and so successful that he had to
fire all his village portfolio managers because they couldn’t manage it well enough. He
went to the big city where all of the big shot portfolio managers were. He was so
successful that he actually had to tear down all his little barns and build bigger barns to
contain his stuff. Then he threw a party to celebrate success. Everybody came to
celebrate the guy’s success. Yet somebody showed up at the party who wasn’t invited:
God. God said, “You fool.” The whole world thought he was a success, but God saw
things differently. He wasn’t a fool because he had a lot of stuff. God said he was fool
because he had a lot of stuff and didn’t have God at the center. He said to the rich
man, “This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you
have prepared for yourself?” What a powerful statement of how God views “success”
without himself at the center.
Jesus then turns to his followers and says to them, why are you so
distracted from kingdom stuff by earth-side realities? Why are you worried about where
you’re going to get your next pair of Birkenstocks and your next designer robe? Why are
you so worried about where you’re going to get your next meal? Why have you been so
diverted from the kingdom and all the realities of the kingdom by earth-side gain and
supply for yourself? Now listen to what Jesus says: “[Y]our Father knows that you need
them. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.” For true
followers of Christ, God measures our lives by the faithful pursuit of the kingdom.
The kingdom has a king. It’s not a democracy. You don’t vote Jesus out one
day. It’s a monarchy. It’s a benevolent dictatorship, if you please. In a kingdom, one
person is totally in charge. The kingdom has rules that must be embraced by its
citizens. When it comes to money, the kingdom of God has backward-sounding rules:
Give it away, and it will be given unto you. The kingdom has an economy, a supply-side
economy. You give it away, and God supplies it from behind; you give it away, and God
pours it back in. The kingdom not only has a king, rules and an economy, but it also
has terms and term limits. What are the terms of the kingdom? Eternity. Being a
kingdom person means asking what you will be doing for eternity. That’s why Christ
closed this section of Luke 12 by saying, “Provide purses for yourselves that will not
wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near
and no moth destroys.” Think about that treasure. Think about the treasure in heaven
of having Jesus approach you and hearing the words, “Well done, good and faithful
servant!” (Matthew 25:21b).
If the point of accountability is not the cash but the catch, the question we
must ask is, who manages your portfolio? Is your portfolio under kingdom
management? Is it run by the rules, the purposes, the terms of the eternal kingdom of
Jesus Christ? Laying up treasures in heaven is not stockpiling money in donations and
endowments. I call that laying it up here. I want to be really careful in saying this
because there may be reasons for exception: If you added up all of God’s money that
is laid back in foundations and endowments, it would be billions of dollars. As someone
who serves Christ in a ministry that has global opportunities, I speak for hundreds of
people like myself. The opportunities are limitless about what we could do for Jesus
Christ with the money that is stowed away in foundations and endowments. You would
think, given the prosperity of the last 10 years and all the stockpiled money we have in
our foundations and in our endowments, if we could open the floodgates, we could do
things for God in our day. Think about the possibilities.
Establishing a Relationship
The third cameo is the most important of all: What Jesus really wants when he comes
into the world is us. I remember a very wealthy man who was blessed by God and was
generous to the kingdom. One day we were out for coffee, just horsing around, when
he got serious, and I’ll never forget what he said: “I wonder sometimes if anybody likes
me for who I am, or I just wonder if everybody wants to hang out with me because of
my money.” Do you ever feel that way? You might just get the sneaking suspicion in
your brain that Jesus is another one: “All he wants is my money. I wonder if he’d like
me if I didn’t have any money.” I think this is mistaken thinking. You didn’t bring your
money to the cross, did you? No. We all come the same way: humble, poor, wretched,
repentant sinners. Lay aside those thoughts, and we’ll talk about what Jesus really
wants when he walks into that room about which we spoke earlier.
The book of Revelation contains letters to the seven churches of Asia. All of
these letters have commendations and reproofs, with the exception of two that have no
reproofs, only commendations. One of those letters has no commendation, only
reproof: the letter to Laodicea (Revelation 3:14-22). They had a huge problem. The
other churches had problems; for example, doctrinal heresy in the church and
entertaining the sect of the Nicolations (Revelation 2:6), who encouraged forms of
immorality to celebrate sexuality. Yet when the Lord talks to the church of Laodicea,
he’s upset with them more than any other church:
To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: “These are the words of the Amen,
the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. I know your deeds, that you are
neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are
lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”
I don’t want to be gentle here because the translators have all been gentle,
but what he is essentially saying is, “You make me sick. When I think about you, I feel
like vomiting.” What on earth did the church of Laodicea do? He says, “You say, ‘I am
rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing,’ ” not even God.
One of the great dangers of wonderful, phenomenal financial success is the
sin of self-sufficiency. We say we know we need God. Of course you know you need God,
but do you live like you need God? Deuteronomy says that when you go into a land
where you have wells that you did not dig and cities that you did not build and vineyards
that you did not plant, then beware of forgetting the Lord thy God. In this lies our
danger. Where does everything you have come from? From God. James says, “Every
good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly
lights” (James 1:17a). Believe me, you wouldn’t have a dime to your name or a thread
of clothes on your back if it weren’t for the grace of God in your life providing everything
you need in abundance. He gave you your brains, he gave you your temperaments, he
gave you your every opportunity, and he gave you your education. It’s all from him.
Here is the danger: We get so caught up in the gifts that we have forgotten the giver.
That’s the danger that offends Jesus.
If I had a lot of money and my 30-year-old son called me and said, “Dad,
we’re moving. All our friends have bigger houses, and I need $20,000,” I would write
him a check. What if I didn’t hear from him again on the matter? That was it. He never
sought my advice or counsel. About nine months later he said, “Dad, all my friends
have boats. I don’t have quite enough money. Can I have $10,000 for a boat?” I
say, “Sure, I love you.” I put it in the mail and give him $10,000. Months later he
says, “All my friends are going to Hawaii for a month. Dad, do you have about $9,000?
If I get that, I can go with them.” I say, sure, and I never hear from him. How do you
think I’d feel as a dad? Ticked. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t that be an offense? Similarly,
wouldn’t it be an offense for God to abundantly pour out his grace for on the body of
Christ only to be marginalized by us? Is he not the center?
What’s the problem here? Like the church of Laodicea, many of us are
completely taken with everything we have. He tells us we have forgotten that we are
wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked in his sight. We act as though we don’t
need or want him. We’ve lost him under the piles of stuff. Our true condition isn’t
anything like we think it is: we are poor, blind and wretched. We need to put Jesus back
in the center. Toward the end of this letter, Jesus says, “Here I am! I stand at the door
and knock.” Think of this: In all of their influence and in all of their wealth and in all
that they have, where is Jesus? He is standing humbly on the outside knocking, asking
to come in.
I find the contrast interesting. These letters begin with Jesus in chapter 1. It’s
the vision of his awesome majestic power, might and authority: Jesus walking among
the seven lampstands and harvesting seven stars out of the universe to hold in his
hand, his hair of white like snow, his voice like the voices of many waters, and the two-
edged sword. It’s such a compelling image of the almighty Christ that John falls down
like a dead man before Christ. He is so compelling. He is so powerful. He is so worthy.
At the end of the letters this worthy, compelling Christ is almost too much to think
about. Where is he? Humbly bent outside knocking, wanting to come in.
Our self-sufficiency shuts him out. You say you’ll open the door. Give him your
checkbook, your portfolio. You’ll give it all away. Do you know what’s interesting in this
text? He doesn’t want your money. He wants you. If you will open the door, he will come
in and dine with you. Picture sitting down at a banquet with Jesus, with the abundance
he supplies and gives on the table before you. What he wants is not your riches but a
relationship with you. If he is first in your life and you are in relationship with him, all
the other stuff of life will take care of itself.
Some time ago, I was flying from Europe back to the States. I typically fly
coach unless I get bumped up to business class. When one flies coach, one of the most
important things in transatlantic flight is the seat assignment. My favorite seat is by the
aisle, so I have a little room to lean out and get nailed by those carts that come flying
down the aisle. This particular plane had a two-five-two configuration. I had my 20-B
seat. I was on the two side. I was on the aisle. I had my seat. The plane starts filling
up, and what I notice is that nobody’s sitting in the A seat. That’s the second great
benefit if nobody sits next to you. If you have an empty seat all the way back to
Chicago, that’s great. I’m praying these people by me. I’m praying them to the back of
the plane. Then my worship life started to accelerate a little bit because every time
somebody walked by I praised the Lord. The whole plane filled up and still nobody was
sitting in 20-A. I couldn’t believe this.
The last people to board the plane were a family
that slipped into the five-seat section right across from me. There was a little girl, and
no sooner as they moved in there, she broke into sobs. I heard her say through her
tears, “Daddy, you told me I could have a window seat. You promised me.” I was
thinking, “Oh, Lord, no.” I probably wouldn’t have done this if the Lord didn’t have me
in a full nelson, pinned to the seat right in front of me. I tapped the lady on the
shoulder and said, “If she’s wants to sit over here, she can.” It was the first time in my
life I wanted to look like an unsafe person. I must not have succeeded though because
the lady said, “Stephanie, this nice man says you can sit next to him.” I figured she’d
be far too shy to do that since she was only about 6 years old. Well, she wasn’t shy. She
grabbed her blanket and doll and bounded over her mom’s lap, bounded over my lap,
and she landed in the seat. When I asked her if she needed help with her seat belt,
she said, “No, thank you. I fly a lot.” She put it on.
From that moment on, this little girl
never stopped talking. I got the history of her family. She told me her little rottweiler
pup, Duke, was down in the hole of the plane. We took off, and she began, “Look at
this, look at this ...” I’m thinking, “Eight hours!” About 20 minutes into the flight she
asked, “Do you want to play a game?” I told her I would and asked her what we were
going to play. “Guess my favorite animal,” she said. So I replied, “Obviously Duke,” to
which she responded “Not Duke. He’s my dog, silly.” I thought I would say everything
that kids hate. I said, “Snakes.” “Yuck, I hate snakes.” I said, “Spiders.” “Yuck, I hate
spiders.” “Would you like a hint?” she finally asked, “It’s got four legs and a tail.” After
a while she asked, “Do you give up?” I said, “I give up, Stephanie.” She said, “It’s a
horse.” I said, “Stephanie, of course. Horses are wonderful. I agree. I think horses are
wonderful.” Then she got real quiet. I thought maybe she was going to doze off. She
pulled her blanket up a little bit. I reached for a magazine, and as I did I got a little
elbow in my side. I looked down at her as she threw out her little hand and said, “Want
to be friends?” Was my response, “Actually no, Stephanie. I already have more friends
than I can maintain”? Of course, I didn’t say that. I said, “Sure, Stephanie, let’s be
friends.”
In the midst of all his blessings and his grace, Jesus throws out his nail-
scarred hand to you and desires to be your friend. What will your answer be? If he’s
your friend, it will make a huge difference in the bounty of his blessings. When he’s
your friend, you’re going to feel threatened every once in a while, yet there’s nothing
better than living a life where Jesus has you—all of you. You’ll find your heart
singing, “What a friend I have in Jesus.”
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