It is wonderful to be together tonight, sharing the Word of God and being at this conference.
It was, in fact, forty years ago at the Richmond Conference that I first saw the heavenly vision. I will never forget our brother Lance as he shared the wonders of Christ, and our brother Stephen as he shared on God’s eternal purpose. My eyes were opened.
At that time, I was a minister, I suppose, in the charismatic movement. But I saw some things that never let me go. I am very thankful for all that our brother Lance shared with us in those days, and our brother Stephen as well.
Well, I was happy for years to carry Lance’s suitcase around, even though it was full of tea and such things. I did not think I would be in a position of sharing in these years, but I am glad to be here. We can talk about those who are faithful stewards of the mysteries of Christ.
I would like us to turn to a few passages, beginning with the one that is our theme in 1 Corinthians 4. We will read just a few verses beyond the first two, through verse 5.
Let a man regard us in this manner:
as servants of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.
In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy.
But to me it is a very small thing that I may be examined by you, or by any human court.
In fact, I do not even examine myself.
For I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted;
but the One Who examines me is the Lord.
Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes,
Who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness, and disclose the motives of men’s hearts;
and then each man’s praise will come to him from God.— 1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Then 1 Corinthians 9:16-17:
For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of,
for I am under compulsion;
for woe is me if I do not preach the gospel.
For if I do this voluntarily, I have a reward;
but if against my will, I have a stewardship entrusted to me.
Then, in Ephesians 6:19-20, Paul is coming to the end of his letter and sharing personal things. He is asking for prayer:
Pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth,
to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,
for which I am an ambassador in chains;
that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.
Finally, two references in 2 Timothy. First, in 2 Timothy 1:8-12, Paul speaks to Timothy, this young steward and servant:
Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, or of me His prisoner;
but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God,
Who has saved us and called us with a holy calling,
not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace
which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity,
but now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus,
Who abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel,
for which I was appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher.
For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed;
for I know Whom I have believed,
and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.
Then, some of Paul’s last words before his martyrdom, as we suppose, in 2 Timothy 4:6-8:
For I am already being poured out as a drink offering,
and the time of my departure has come.
I have fought the good fight,
I have finished the course,
I have kept the faith.
In the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness,
which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day;
and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.
Our Father, we come to You tonight. We stand before our Lord Jesus, Who was the perfect and faithful steward of the things of God. He Himself being a mystery, and in Himself revealing mysteries, He was the Servant of servants, the Steward of stewards. We bow before Him in worship.
Thank You for such a vision of what it means to be a steward. But we also thank You that in this dispensation You have sent to us the Holy Spirit to steward the Word of God. You have entrusted Him with our lives, to bring us unto perfection, to produce a bride worthy of her Husband.
And so we feel we have the right to ask that the Holy Spirit would anoint us, help us, open our eyes, and give us that grace necessary to be good and faithful stewards until Your return.
We thank You for this time together now, Lord, as we open the Word of God and think about the life of Paul. Inspire some young people to desire such a call, and we who are older, to be revived in our stewardship unto the end. These things we pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
As we look at these magnificent words in chapter 4, where Paul makes this amazing statement, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith,” we are hearing the testimony of a faithful steward.
He is looking back on his life, and what a life it has been. But for Paul, I think he would say that his life really began when he had that mysterious experience on the road to Damascus, where a light from heaven—the Shekinah glory—fell so brightly upon him that he fell to the ground.
In that moment, he began to live. As he saw that bright light, he heard the voice that said:
Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?
— Acts 9:4
And he said, “Who art Thou, Lord?” When he heard, “I am Jesus,” he entered into a mystery.
He realized that the living God was seeing him in the face of Jesus Christ. All he could do was bow before Him as a captured, arrested bondservant and say, “Lord, what would You have me to do?”
This was the beginning of Paul’s life. We see in this beginning something of the definition we are trying to gather together regarding stewardship.
The first thing we see is that Paul surrendered his whole life as a bondservant unto the Lord, under the great “I AM,” Whose name was Jesus.
When Paul later shared his testimony in 1 Corinthians 4, he said, “Let a man consider this: that we are servants of Christ first, and stewards of the mysteries of God.”
So we can make this statement, I think without any controversy: before a person is entrusted as a steward, that person must be a servant of the Lord.
It is the brother or sister who is willing to lay down his or her life as a living sacrifice unto the Lord Jesus—to be arrested, to be surrendered under this magnificent Lord. Those who bow down and accept servitude are those who are entrusted with stewardship.
I think that is important to realize, because in one sense we are speaking in vain if we are going to deal with the stewardship of the mysteries while we are not willing to be His servants. He does not entrust things to those who are not surrendered to Him.
Then we also see, from the life of Paul, that as a servant obeys, that servant is entrusted with more and more. Paul’s stewardship entered further and further into the mysteries of God and of Christ, but it was a result of obedient service and therefore being entrusted with more.
We would like to grasp with our minds the mysteries that even our brother Stephen is laying before us. But I would challenge you and say: we do not really understand those mysteries unless we are serving the Lord and being responsible with that which we have already been given.
It is to those who have been given that more will be given. So this is a challenge to us to be faithful if we really want to know these mysteries beyond some kind of head knowledge—which is the easier way to go.
Stewardship is obviously related to being a servant of the Lord: servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. If we serve the Lord faithfully, the mysteries are revealed to us all the more. But if we turn from service into disobedience, mysteries become head knowledge, not a revelation experience that we live under.
Just that by way of introduction: a steward has to be one who is willing to fight the noble fight. We cannot be stewards entrusted with anything if we are not willing to fight for it, keep it, and guard it.
I like the word in Greek. It is a little better than “good fight.” Paul says, “I fought the noble fight.” Why? Because he had been entrusted with some treasure.
He fought the noble fight all through his Christian life. When you look at the biographies of Paul strewn through Corinthians, Acts, and other places, you realize how much fighting the apostle had to do.
You might say, “Well, he was a fighter by nature.” But no—he was fighting for a noble cause, a noble fight. Sometimes he had to fight against the Jews, sometimes against the Judaizers, sometimes against false brethren, and sometimes against carnal brethren. At one point, he even had to stand up to Peter. Think about that.
But mostly, Paul had to fight the strongholds in his own mind, in his own flesh, and in his own soul. He even received a messenger from Satan, as he called that thorn in his flesh. But through all of that, he fought the good fight.
What can we say about him running his course? Some people approximate his course to be fifteen thousand miles. If you have a Fitbit—which Paul probably did not wear—that is about three million steps.
He ran the course the Lord set out for him, and at the end of his days he knew that he had run the race. That is an amazing thing to say.
But think of the running he had to do: through cold and through night, amidst robbers, in shipwrecks, and in persecutions. We do not know all the stories of the many places he went and preached where nobody responded and everything seemed to be a complete disaster.
He did not know if he had left any seed or if there was any fruit. He simply moved on to the next town. But he was faithful. He ran his course. Through the whole thing, he kept the faith.
Talk about discouraging moments. Here he is writing at the eve of his martyrdom, and he says in his letter that everybody had deserted him, except Luke, Mark, and a few others. Yet he kept the faith.
What does a good and faithful steward look like? Well, there we are. It is right there.
The amazing thing, when you think about it all, is the confidence Paul has that he will receive the crown of righteousness—that his reward awaits him.
What do you think was the basis of his confidence? Was it because he remembered how many saints had been saved, how many churches he had started, how many miracles he had performed, or what spiritual status he had attained?
No, it was not those things. When he shared his testimony regarding his stewardship before King Agrippa, he said, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.”
The humility of that statement arrests me, because it is completely different from saying, “I was obedient to the heavenly vision.” Paul dared not say that.
He knew that he made mistakes. There were times he acted precipitously, times he lost his temper, times he had struggles with his brothers and needed to be reconciled. He realized there were times he became discouraged and let the ball drop.
He says as much in 2 Corinthians: a door for the gospel opened in Troas, but he was so bothered about Corinth that he blew the opportunity.
But what he said in the end was, “I am not saying I was perfect, nor am I saying I did not make mistakes. But I always felt that I was under this heavenly vision, and I was being drawn back to serve as a steward under that heavenly vision.”
What was the basis of his confidence? We read it:
I am not ashamed,
for I know Whom I have believed,
and I am persuaded that He is able to keep
that which I have committed unto Him against that day.— 2 Timothy 1:12
Here is a lesson from a steward who had been faithful through a life of great hardship, challenge, persecution, and fighting. He had learned a secret: when he was entrusted with something, he did the best he could by the grace of God, and then he entrusted it back to the Lord, Who was able to keep it.
Maybe I share a message that is not so good, but I commit it back to the Lord, that He would get some fruit out of it somehow—that the Spirit would interpret into people’s hearts the things that I was not able to explain.
Whatever Paul did, he committed it back to the Lord, that the Lord would multiply it. Is that not wonderful? How many times a steward finds that the Lord takes a couple of loaves and some fish and does tremendously more than we ever could have imagined.
Do you know what to do? As you serve the Lord and are entrusted with something, it is best that you entrust it back to the Lord. Do not keep it in your pocket.
Say, “Lord, I give You the events of this day, the failures of it and the victories of it. Even take my failures and do something redemptive out of them.”
I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.
These are just some initial thoughts about what it means to be a good steward. Today, most people do not know what a steward is. You are quite an oddball group—probably some five hundred or more people here who may even know what the word steward means.
Most people think it means somebody who works on an airplane. Or, listening to Jerry’s messages, they might think it is Stuart Little, a little mouse.
But something has gotten warped in Christianity, if you do not mind me speaking out. There is no longer a sense of stewardship, but a sense of entitlement.
Grace has become a dangerous word: demanding of God all our blessings and all our rights of the kingdom now. We do not want to wait. We want them now. We want His presence now. We want His glory now. We want to be with Him now. Now, now, now, now.
But the steward is always calculating against the day of His return. There is quite a difference there, do you not think?
We have all kinds of parables on stewardship in the New Testament, all of which are wonderfully misinterpreted by many today. I am sure nobody in this room does that.
Jesus asks in Luke 12:
Who then is the faithful and sensible steward,
whom his master will put in charge of his servants,
to give them their rations at the proper time?— Luke 12:42
Who then is a good and faithful servant? Everybody looks around and says, “Well, I hope somebody.” Because most Christians today are on the take. Forget stewarding and supplying—today it is, “Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme.”
In Luke 14, Jesus speaks of a man preparing to build a tower who wants to count the cost, and of a general preparing to go to war who wants to consider the strategy. Many Christians interpret that parable to mean that a disciple should always count the cost before doing anything for the Lord.
Actually, it means exactly the opposite. Jesus concludes by saying that if you are not willing to sacrifice all, leave parents and family, deny yourself, and forsake everything, you cannot be His disciple.
In other words, a disciple does not count the cost. If the King says, “Let us build,” we say, “We are all in.” If the King says, “I am going to war,” we say, “We are all in.” That is a steward.
We need to learn this lesson again. The two great stewardship parables are the parable of the talents and the parable of the minas. It is easy today: we take our talent and bury it in the ground; we take our mina and put it in a napkin.
We are not even concerned with the Lord’s return and the fact that we will stand before the judgment seat of Christ to be asked what we have done with the stewardship entrusted to us.
“Oh, it is all grace, it is all grace. I know I flopped and dropped it in the ground. I cannot even find that one talent anymore. But Lord, You will take me just as I am.”
Well, He will strip you down, and you will suffer great loss.
Am I being too harsh here? I know people like the sweet tunes of grace. But we will share on the mystery of grace tomorrow, and there is actually a lot more leather to grace than you may realize.
I am thankful today, as we gather tonight among many saints, that there are good and faithful stewards—good and faithful servants. This is what the Lord desires. This is what the Lord is looking for. This is whom the Lord will use in the last days.
I am glad you are here. I am also glad for those of you who may be like me when I came here forty years ago. I was a servant of the Lord, stewarding some things of God, but I did not know the whole counsel of God, nor did I have a comprehensive vision.
A servant serves the way he knows how to serve. I am thankful that I came to this conference forty years ago and had my eyes opened to the mysteries of Christ and of the church. It made all the difference in my life.
If you are here as a servant of God but you are not quite sure what all this mystery stuff is about, I hope the Lord opens your eyes and you see. There is nothing more wonderful than not only being a steward of whatever entrustment the Lord has given you, but serving as that steward under the light of heaven—understanding how it fits into the whole thing.
There are so many servants of God wandering around, serving and serving and serving, with no idea what the ultimate purpose of the whole thing is. But if you have been privileged to see that, then you are blessed indeed.
I feel fear for those who have disobeyed the heavenly vision. How can someone taste and see the things of heaven, taste of the Spirit of Christ, see a vision of Him, and then take a vacation from Him? To quit, retire, or become distracted with worldly things?
Those who disobey the heavenly vision are worse off than those who never saw it, because to whom much has been given, much is required.
I want us all to see through an open heaven all that the Lord desires and has purposed in Christ, as unfolded by the apostle Paul and as unfolded by our brother Stephen. But realize this: as you see these things, you are responsible for something. Something has been entrusted to you.
We have recently been studying the Gospel of Luke in our fellowship life back in Manhattan. We came to Luke 6, and I saw something I had never seen so clearly before. It was an awakening.
In Luke 6, Jesus chooses the twelve apostles from among a number of disciples. The twelve are named beginning in verse 12. But then we come to verse 20, where Jesus came down to a level place with the twelve apostles, and it says:
And turning His gaze toward His disciples, He began to say.
— Luke 6:20
I had never seen that before. This is not, I think, the same occasion as the Beatitudes in Matthew 5—that is just my feeling; you can disagree. But in any case, these are much more personally applied Beatitudes.
This is Jesus looking His disciples in the eyes and saying:
Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.
Blessed are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and insult you,
and scorn your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man.— Luke 6:20-22
Very personally, He looks at them and says, “Blessed are you who are persecuted, because even as you are being persecuted, you are in line with the prophets of old who were persecuted in the same way. So leap for joy.”
He looked them in the eyes and said, “Now listen, My disciples: you are blessed if, because you are walking with Me, learning from Me, and serving Me, you are poor, you weep, you hunger, and you are persecuted.”
This is what Jesus was saying to them as He looked them right in the eyes, saying, “My stewards, this is what life will be like.”
What I had not seen so startlingly before is that immediately, without a change of paragraph or anything, still gazing at them in the eyes, He says:
But woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full.
Woe to you who are well-fed now, for you shall be hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.
Woe to you when all men speak well of you.— Luke 6:24-26
Woe to you if you have decided to take your riches now. Woe to you if you have decided you want happy times now and are unwilling to face the trials of being faithful. Woe to you if you want to be recognized and appreciated by the world.
If this is the case, then you are like the false prophets of old. Jesus is looking at the same disciples and showing us that being a steward has a cost. Being a steward is an acceptance of what it means to walk with Jesus Christ and to be entrusted with the things of God.
May it be that none of us would be disobedient to the heavenly vision.
I have been asked to share from the life of the apostle Paul on this matter of stewardship of the mysteries. Of course, my brother Stephen will steal all my thunder if I dare tread too far into stewardship of the mysteries, because that is actually his theme.
But I want to share three messages, if the Lord enables me, on stewardship:
Tonight, we consider stewards of the mystery of the gospel. “Gospel”—that is not very mysterious, right? Oh, well, we will see.
Tomorrow night, Lord willing, we will consider stewards of the mystery of grace. Very important, very important stewardship.
Then Thursday night: stewards of the testimony. That will speak for itself when we come to it.
Let us return to 1 Corinthians 9 and consider the word we read. Paul, as a steward of the mysteries of God, was a steward of the gospel. He never left that position.
He had been entrusted with the gospel, and he would be faithful as a steward of the gospel. He says that he was under a compulsion. One version says, “A necessity has been laid upon me.”
There is a woe if he does not preach the gospel. He cannot do it for money. He must do it. It is a stewardship. The Lord entrusted the gospel to him.
Brothers and sisters, I believe we have been entrusted with that same gospel. I wonder if we have that same sense of “ought,” “woe,” and “I must.” A necessity has been laid upon me.
Paul’s words may sound harsh in some translations:
For if I do this voluntarily, I have a reward;
but if against my will, I have a stewardship entrusted to me.— 1 Corinthians 9:17
But you understand what Paul is saying. “If I had my preference, would I go out into the street, preach the gospel, and have people throw stones at me? Nah, I think I would watch women’s soccer.”
But in the priority of my stewardship, a necessity is laid upon me. I am to be a steward of the gospel. The Lord handed it to me and said, “Be faithful, Paul.” And our brother Paul indeed was faithful.
Turn to Galatians. We see that the gospel is not simply some facts about how to get saved—the four spiritual laws. The gospel Paul speaks of has a mysterious level to it.
In Galatians 1:11-12, Paul says:
For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man.
For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
Now, that is a gospel. He was entrusted with that amazing gospel. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ personally revealed. Obviously, he saw that on the road to Damascus.
First above all other things, before we get into the great mysteries, Paul was the steward of the gospel.
Most people think of the gospel as a simple thing—how to get saved, and that sort of thing. But in Ephesians 6:19, Paul asks the saints to pray that he might make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel.
He says:
Pray on my behalf that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth,
to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,
for which I am an ambassador in chains.— Ephesians 6:19-20
Paul’s gospel was the whole deal. It was not only being saved by faith through grace, but entering into all the mysteries: what it means to be a member of the body of Christ, the sanctifying process of Galatians 2:20, Ephesians 1:10, and Colossians 3:11—that Christ may be all and in all.
That is Paul’s gospel. What a mystery that gospel is.
What is the mystery of the gospel? To us, because we are already inside the door, it does not sound like a mystery anymore. But I will give you three front points.
Once those three points plow into a person’s life, that person enters into an eternity where there are great mysteries beyond. Here are three great mysteries of the gospel which we take for granted, but the world knows nothing about.
But the world says, “No, no, no. How can I pay for it?” The world only knows how to pay for something. The world knows there is no free lunch. People reject the free offer and must see by revelation that there is nothing they can do. Jesus paid it all.
Think of those three great front points of the gospel: God loves you; God came in the flesh in Jesus Christ and died for you; and by God’s grace, it is already done. There is nothing you need to do except receive it, accept it, and walk in it by faith.
That is a mystery from the other side. I am talking about outsiders. They listen to you say that, and they think it is very mysterious stuff.
Paul never forgot what happened to him on the road to Damascus. Everywhere he went, he preached that gospel.
I am contending tonight that our first understanding, if we want to enter into mysteries, is this: if you have been saved and the life of Jesus Christ is in you, then understand that something wonderful and marvelous has been entrusted to you—the gospel.
Now, will you be faithful?
To be a steward of the gospel necessitates standing on a three-pronged foundation.
First, I do not believe anybody can be a true, faithful steward of the gospel who does not believe completely that the Word of God is inerrant, given to us, true, and faithful.
If we do not believe that the Word of God is the Word of God, we will find that our stewardship of the gospel has holes in it.
I went to a seminary of a denomination. They believed the Bible, but did not believe it was totally accurate. Yet at the same time, they were telling us to evangelize.
I always found evangelism being kicked out from under me. When I went to cemetery—a seminary—I had only been a Christian two years. I knew I was saved by grace. I knew the blood of Jesus had bought me. I knew I had been resurrected when they pulled me up out of that creek in baptism. I was happy.
Then I got to a seminary that said, “Well, the Bible is great, but you know, it is not perfect.” I had a professor who said, “Yes, I believe in the resurrection, but not the bodily resurrection.”
You start hearing this kind of swimming that goes around in the ivory towers of theology. By the time I got out, my gospel had been undermined. I did not know quite how to handle it.
I went through a crisis in the first year of my ministry. I remember being in the church basement, getting down on my knees and crying like a baby. I put my Bible before the Lord and said, “Lord, I believe this whole thing. I do not understand it. Help me understand. I believe the whole thing.”
I threw that whole thing behind me. I was not going to take that garbage I got from seminary. If the Bible is not true, we have nothing to stand on.
You can tell me who you think Jesus is, and I can tell you who I think Jesus is. But the Bible tells us Who Jesus is. There is an objective standard beyond your mind and my mind. I think we should go by that.
The Bible teaches us of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, Who died for us.
My mother was a Christian Science practitioner. I grew up not involved in church. By the time I was fourteen, I was smoking, and Christian Science does not like people who smoke, so I stopped going. That is a digression.
But the point is this: Mary Baker Eddy, in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which is sort of their Bible, says there is no such thing as substitutionary atonement.
I praise God for the day when my mother, after being a Christian Science practitioner for twenty-five years, threw that whole thing aside and said, “I accept the blood of Jesus Christ for my salvation.”
She had the Word, not Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. The Word of God stood true.
If we do not know that the blood of Christ is our protection, if we do not know that the Holy Spirit will sanctify us, and if we do not know that our life can be exchanged through His death, resurrection, and our identification with Him, then what gospel do we have if we do not believe the Word of God?
But we are not just talking about doctrine. We are talking about obeying the Word of God, are we not? A servant of the Lord, one who would be a steward of the gospel, must obey the Word of God.
Our brother mentioned Bakht Singh this morning. He was saved as an unbeliever when someone gave him a Bible, and he began to read the Gospel of John.
Do you want to hear the words that saved our brother? Bakht Singh was one of the most unique men I ever had the privilege of meeting and reading about. He was a wonderful man of God, and the Lord would speak to him in a living way through portions—even fragments—of a verse.
He testified that he was saved while reading John 3:
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.
— John 3:3
What saved him? This: “Truly, truly, I say to you.”
When he read that, conviction immediately came to his heart. He was a double-mouthed, lying hypocrite. Nothing he said could be said, “Truly, truly.” But Jesus said, “Truly, truly.” Jesus was God. He was a sinner, and he got saved.
He lived by the Word of God. He would be with his fellow workers in a town, preaching the gospel for several weeks. Then, after praying all night, he would get up in the morning and say, “It is time to move to another town.”
They would ask, “How come?” He would say, “Well, I read the Scripture this morning, and they departed. Let us go.”
The Lord used that man in an amazing way because he believed every word of God.
I spoke with a dear brother in New York who told me about an old gospel preacher in China, a powerful gospel preacher. He said, “The strange thing about him is, he just reads Scripture, and people get saved.”
There are all these young whippersnapper gospel preachers now who talk about getting saved as though it were like getting on the internet—all this sort of stuff. No postmodern stuff for this man. He simply reads Scripture, and people get saved.
They asked the older brother, “How come, when you just read Scripture, people get saved?” He said, “Because I believe the Scripture.”
That is pretty profound. There is a level of conviction regarding the Word of God that someone can reach where he simply reads the Word of God and another person is convicted. Praise God.
You remember the wonderful story Lance used to tell. There was a young preacher named F. B. Meyer, an amazing man of God in England.
When he was a young pastor, he testified that his devotional life and spiritual life were up and down. One weekend they had a missionary conference at their church, and C. T. Studd, along with another brother from the Cambridge Seven, was staying with them and speaking at the conference.
Early one morning before daylight, F. B. Meyer heard rustling and noise from the next room. He knocked on the door, and C. T. Studd opened it.
In wintertime in England, you freeze in the bedrooms. They do not put heat on in the bedrooms; that is for posh people. C. T. Studd had a rug wrapped around him and a Bible in his hand.
F. B. Meyer asked, “What are you doing?” C. T. Studd said, “I am reading in the Gospels the commandments of Jesus to see whether there is any commandment He wants me to fulfill—anything He wants me to do today.”
He was a man who believed the Word of God, and he was a servant and steward of the gospel.
Recently, with some folks who are here tonight, I went to Jerusalem for Lance’s memorial service. We heard a little testimony of Lance. A brother was interviewing him about his early days in London with young people at Halford House.
The interviewer asked, “Lance, why did you not stay in the denomination?” Most of Lance and the young people came from a Baptist church.
Lance said, “You know, I could not be obedient to the Word of God.” The interviewer asked, “What do you mean?”
Lance said, “I cannot find anywhere in the Word of God where it says that man should ordain me. So when they wanted to ordain me, how could I do that?”
He said, “I looked in the Word of God, and I could not see anywhere where the Bible says, ‘Join a denomination.’ I fellowship with people of all kinds of denominations, but I cannot join a denomination.”
The interviewer asked, “Why?” Lance replied, “In order to be obedient to the Word of God.”
You obey the Word of God, and it will cost you something. It will cost you something.
It is especially important in these days, when even some of the great leaders of the Christian churches in America have abandoned the Word of God and its definition of the sacredness of marriage for the sake of accommodation.
They have left the Word of God. What foundation can you stand on? Public consensus?
To believe in the Word of God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to stand on it—that is what it takes to be a steward of the gospel.
The second thing, just as important, is the absolute necessity of being filled with the Holy Spirit and allowing the Holy Spirit to deal with our lives.
A servant of God is led by the Holy Spirit. These are the sons of God. They know what time it is. They know what to do. They know what the Lord is doing, and they know what Satan is up to.
They are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, incorporated into the body of Christ as members by the Holy Spirit, sanctified by the Holy Spirit, disciplined by the Holy Spirit, and empowered by the Holy Spirit.
In 1 Thessalonians 1:5, Paul says to young Christians:
For our gospel did not come to you in word only,
but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.
I remember attending a church in England where they were having a gospel service. My wife, some family, and I sat there listening. My thought was, “Every word this man is preaching is absolutely scriptural, and there is absolutely no power.”
He shared apologetically, finished, and prayed. Nobody got saved. Good news: some people got saved in the end. But the point is this: the Word can speak for itself, and someone can simply read Scripture and another person can get saved.
But that does not mean the steward of the gospel is to go around in total weakness, mumbling out the truth of the Word of God. No. He needs to be empowered by the Holy Spirit.
What a difference it makes when there are those empowered by the Holy Spirit. You cannot find one brother in history who was a faithful steward of the mystery of the gospel and was not empowered with the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
D. L. Moody was a great gospel preacher. He remembered the day and hour when he was walking down the streets of New York City. There was a sister in his fellowship who kept bothering him, saying, “Brother, that was wonderful today, and I cannot wait to see what happens when you get filled with the Holy Spirit.”
She would remind him from time to time, “I am still praying for you to get the Holy Spirit.”
But Moody remembered the day when, walking the streets of New York during a gospel campaign, the Holy Spirit came upon him with such power that he had to ask the Lord to stop.
Billy Graham would tell you about a bed and breakfast in Wales. As a young evangelist, he preached with many words and not much impact. He met Stephen Olford, this precious brother. They knelt down in that bed and breakfast, and Billy Graham asked the Lord to fill him with the Holy Spirit.
He went back to London, and people poured down the aisles to be saved. It is the power of the Holy Spirit that brings conviction to the Word of God. A steward of the gospel needs such anointing and power.
It bothers me when I see people who seem satisfied with the amount of the Holy Spirit they have. I do not have enough. We all need more. Oh, that the Holy Spirit would pour Himself out upon us in amazing power.
You know what it says in Acts 1:8:
You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you;
and you shall be My witnesses.
If we do not know that fullness, we get ourselves into many things that make us afraid and overwhelm us.
I remember a very personal experience. I was in New York City in 1971, a young pastor just out of the cemetery—seminary. There was an evangelist in New York City who went out into Times Square and preached the gospel every night.
I went out with him several times. They waited for the Broadway shows to get out, and then in Times Square they sang and preached the gospel. This man was a gifted evangelist, and I loved working with him. Then we would walk the streets and witness.
One night, this brother could not come, and neither could his assistant. The assistant was basically the fellow who carried the guitar, but that night he had to preach.
People came pouring out into Times Square. We sang our usual songs, which in 1971 included, “This Little Light of Mine, I’m Gonna Let It Shine”—a really cool song.
People were curious: “What are these thirty-five people sitting on the sidewalk doing?” Then they would come and stop. The brother stood up with a bullhorn—back then, you did not need a special license—and began, “We are here today to tell you about Jesus Christ.”
A woman in the back began questioning him and calling him down. She was so powerful that he had to stop. He said, “Let us just pray. Pray for this woman.” We all bowed our heads and prayed.
I went around behind to see this lady. Some brothers and sisters had gotten into a gospel wrestling match with her, and it was not going anywhere because she was demon possessed.
There was a crowd of perhaps fifteen people. The brothers would say, “But the Bible says—” and she would say, “I do not believe the Bible, and nobody else here does either.” She had a terrible power about her.
I was standing behind her. Suddenly she stopped, spun around, looked at me—because I was the only fellow behind her—and said, “What are you doing, old man of God?”
That is exactly what she said. It scared me to death. I thought my legs were going to fall off.
I had nothing to say. My mind went blank. The one thing I did was stare her down. I do not know why, but she shut up and left. Then we began having more gospel meetings.
But I went home like a whipped puppy, and I said, “Jesus, if You do not give me the power of the Holy Spirit, we do not stand a chance against the devil.”
We cannot fool around with the gospel—not in New York City. You cannot fool around with the gospel. It is not a pretty little party where you go out into the street and have a little thing. You are wrestling with the devil. You need the power of the Holy Spirit.
The third thing is this: if we are to be stewards of the mystery of the gospel, then Jesus Christ must be absolute Master and Lord of our lives.
When the apostle Paul was saved, he was ready to fight. He testified in Damascus just after his salvation in the synagogue, and he was ready to lay down his life for the Lord. I think he had a bit of a martyr complex even.
The Lord said, “No. I am the Master here. Paul, go to the desert for a few years.”
Then Paul said, “Okay, I am ready now.” He went down to Jerusalem, and the brethren said, “Praise God you are here, Paul. Please go to Tarsus, make tents, and tell your mom and dad about the gospel.”
He was under the headship of the Lord. For those who would be stewards of the gospel, the Lord puts a holy restraint on their lives until He can fit them to be shaped like the gospel they are preaching.
The Lord had many things to do in Paul’s life. He had to deal with self-righteousness, his whole background, his relationship to the law, and bring him to the end of himself through Romans 7 and into Galatians 2:20.
He had to give Paul a fuller revelation of Who Jesus was in His church and of all the wonderful mysteries. As all that transformation was going on, the Lord Jesus was Head of Paul’s life, training him and fitting him for this stewardship entrustment.
Eventually, that day came when Barnabas knocked on Paul’s door, and Paul entered into his entrustment as an apostle.
Paul was faithful to the Lord through trials, dealings, and the confronting of his prejudices. Paul’s biggest problem—probably our biggest problem—was that he was naturally strong. He was brilliant, had much natural strength, and had a strong, steely will.
The Lord had to break his mental independence and break his will, bringing him to a place where he could live only by Christ’s life.
These three things are necessary for a steward of the gospel:
All of that is by way of preparation because the Lord wants us to be stewards of the gospel. But do not forget what Paul said to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:16:
Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching.
As stewards of the gospel, we must pay attention that the Lord keeps real in us the very gospel we are preaching. We cannot get distracted by things.
Listen to 1 Timothy 6:11-12:
But flee from these things, you man of God,
and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness.
Fight the good fight of faith;
take hold of the eternal life to which you were called,
and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
Paul had just been talking about the love of money and how it can destroy a ministry. He said, “Timothy, take care of yourself.”
Do not become so engrossed in ministry and teaching that you lose your conscience, lose care for your personal life, stop having your devotions, and then become tempted and distracted by the world.
It is easy to do. There are men today who have fallen in recent months—servants of God preaching the gospel—while their own marriage life and physical life were in shambles. It is a disgrace to the church.
The steward has to take care and watch. Paul said to the Ephesian elders, on his last visit with them before imprisonment, “Take care of yourselves and of all the flock.”
That is a double entrustment. They were entrusted as elders and overseers with the flock of God, but they also needed to take care of themselves. They needed to watch their spiritual life, walk in the light, and obedience to the Word of God.
We as stewards are to be faithful in sharing the mystery of the gospel.
Paul never gave up preaching the gospel. Whenever he had an opportunity, he never became too big and said, “Oh, I am no longer an evangelist. I am now an apostle, a prophet. I am doing big things. I am burdened with church work. I do not have time for the gospel.”
You never heard Paul saying that. He was faithful to the end, whether witnessing to Onesimus while he was in jail in Rome or witnessing to King Agrippa.
If you gave Paul two minutes, he would share how he got saved on the road to Damascus. That was the beginning of his message of the mystery of the gospel, and he shared it faithfully throughout his life.
He never got too high to be one who preached the gospel. Whenever the opportunity arose, there he was.
I think this is perhaps one of the places where we have failed in our stewardship.
We have all kinds of stewardships and entrustments. Some are entrusted to deal with young people, some with this, and some with that. There are many things that the Lord calls us to be stewards of.
But surely, as assemblies, we have been entrusted to share the gospel as a first importance.
It strikes me that we have left reality when we no longer have time for the gospel, when our churches are no longer vitally involved in this laying down of life.
There is nothing more terrifying, more humbling, and harder than preaching the gospel where you live, where you work, and in the environs of your assembly. No, He never said it would be easy.
But it is also one of the most rewarding things that happens. As you preach the gospel faithfully, it opens up the gospel to more than just the gospel, and you see more of the mystery behind the gospel.
Those who have been faithful as evangelists grow in their vision of seeing Jesus in a fuller way.
Are we, as assemblies, like those disciples to whom Jesus says, “Woe”? We have such richness. When I hear the worship here, the prayers, the knowledge of the gospel, and the love for Christ, I wonder what would happen if we were all stewards of the gospel.
What would happen if we took that back home? Not just, “Oh Lord, we are so glad we are here with other Christians, where we can say, ‘Jesus, we love You.’” But what about out there, where we are challenged in what we believe and still stand up and say, “We love Jesus with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. We want to tell you what it is all about.”
There is something cathartic about being faithful in the ministry of the gospel. We as assemblies need to be doing it if we want to have living fellowship.
If we disobey in this stewardship of the gospel, something about all that great mysterious stuff becomes a cloud that does not seem real.
Obey the Lord in this first step. You may think stewardship of the gospel is children’s stuff. I disagree. I think it is a vital lifeline in the testimony of Jesus Christ.
There is always a price to pay, and there is always fruit. Sometimes it is not somebody getting saved; sometimes it is what happens among your own people.
Stewards of the mystery of the gospel. This is the wonderful thing: most of us here know how much more the gospel is than merely how to get saved.
The Lord wants to make disciples. We have so many so-called Christians around us. You may say, “I keep looking for a lost person, but everybody I know is a Christian.”
All right, everybody around you may be a Christian, but I bet most of them need to become disciples of Jesus Christ. Many are just treading water, participating in something that is a cultural experience.
No, no, no, no, no. Make disciples.
You have a brother at work. You know he is a Christian. Share the Lord with him until he goes deeper and understands some mysteries. That is part of the gospel.
When Jesus said, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses,” what did He say first? “Go to Jerusalem first.”
All of us would rather go way out to the remotest parts of the earth, where we are not known. But Jesus says, “No, go to the religious people first and make disciples out of them.”
That is your own backyard. That is your own parents, your own relatives, and those people you know all the time. They may be waiting for somebody to bring them a fuller gospel.
You have a fuller gospel. Somebody needs to be a Priscilla and Aquila and bring someone into a more perfect understanding of the way of the Lord.
But we need to be stewards of the gospel. If we are hiding that talent or hiding that mina, I challenge you: the reality of the other mysteries will not be real, because in a basic way we are disobeying that which is of greatest importance to the Lord.
Preach the full gospel—the whole counsel of God—but preach it. Bear witness to it. That is why we are on this earth.
Our part, as our brother shared with us this morning, is in some wonderful way to bring all the enemy as a footstool for Jesus’ feet and to bring all people under the headship of Jesus Christ through the gospel of salvation.
What a job. This is a wonderful job, a very important job.
But here is the very job where, rather than being faithful ourselves, we look around and blame somebody else. “Why are there not responsible brothers going out witnessing?” That is a good question. Why are they not? They should be.
But if they cannot do it, why would we expect anybody else to do it? Do not lay the blame on them. It is you who have been entrusted.
I think if we minded our own business and were faithful, the Lord could really do something.
Would it not be wonderful if every week, when you gathered together to break bread on Sunday, there were three or four new people who had been saved that week because somebody brought somebody, somebody got saved, and every week there were new people?
“I do not really know how to pray. I am just saved. But can I say, ‘Thank You, Jesus’?”
Immediate life comes into the assembly because it is a reality. You have seen lives changed. There are some assemblies that have not seen anything except Christians getting old.
No, I am serious. I am serious.
I can only pray that the young people will really understand and obey. And you who are older—I do not know. We have something entrusted to us. That is the gospel.
You know why you are saved. I hear prayers here that contain more gospel than people know in Russia, where they are preaching the gospel.
But I am also concerned, because I go to Russia and see people get saved by the gospel, but nobody makes disciples out of them. So they remain baby Christians.
We know the full gospel, but will we be faithful? Will our assemblies take this to heart, do something about it, and invest our own lives in it?
Sometimes we find a place, settle down, get comfortable, have our home, our two dogs, our car, and our job, and become unwilling to continue laying down our lives.
But Paul says, “A necessity is laid upon me,” and it is to be a steward of the gospel.
I hope you sacrifice some time every week to witness the gospel to somebody. I believe we have a stewardship.
Am I wrong? Take it to the Lord and ask Him: what has been entrusted to you?
Again, we can fall back on the fact that if we are not His servants, we have no stewardship. But we are His servants. According to the Bible, everyone who is saved by the King is now a servant of the King.
The question remains: will we be faithful?
The Lord said to His disciples, when they were standing in Samaria after Jesus had witnessed to a Samaritan woman, “Do not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest.’”
In other words, do not say, “These Samaritans are hard-nosed. They are hard to the gospel. They will not listen to us.”
Jesus said:
Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields,
that they are white for harvest.— John 4:35
I do not know where you live, but perhaps you think it is the most gospel-hardened place possible. I used to think New York was the worst, but it is not. There are places much more secular, much darker than New York—can you believe it?
But do not say, “The fields are too tough where we are.” No, no, no. I tell you, look up. The fields are white for harvest.
For those who are faithful stewards, there is so much wonder to enter into: the mystery of what Christ can do, how He leads, how He moves, and how He is willing to work. But it all starts with stewards.
Paul says, “Woe is me if I preach not the gospel.” Do you say that? Is that a woe for you?
Even if you have a hard time finding non-Christians to preach the gospel to, does it bother you? Is there something you are willing to pray about?
Paul: faithful; fought the fight; ran the course; kept the faith; servant of the gospel; steward of the mysteries of the gospel.
May the Lord help us to be inspired by such a testimony in these days.
Our Father, we come to You. We think of Jesus, plodding from place to place. We think of Him and His simple gospel work, laying down everything. He had nowhere to lay His head, no place to call His own, living under an open heaven.
He brought the gospel from place to place, to person after person, and town after town. Then He established disciples and deposited His own life in them in such a way that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, they could be witnesses and faithful stewards of the gospel.
We are the result and the fruit of their faithfulness. Now, in these last days, Lord, we pray that there would yet be the greatest harvest that ever has been.
We have before us, Lord, a room full of people who know a fuller gospel. We know the whole counsel of God, and we have seen a heavenly vision ourselves.
Oh Lord, could we put that to work, as You would entrust us as ministers of the mystery of the gospel?
O Lord, place within our hearts that woe which only desires to please the Lord—that woe which goes beyond thinking of ourselves, our own pleasure, our own satisfaction, and our own riches, and would rather be poor, hungry, praying, and persecuted if that means walking with Jesus.
Lord, make us stewards of the gospel. We pray in Jesus’ name.