0518 FIND US FAITHFUL

FIND US FAITHFUL

My dad had a trust fund that he set up a few years ago, naming my older sister as executor. It takes a lot of trust in a person to entrust them with a trust fund. You have to trust that they will carry out your wishes when you are gone, that they will serve as a trusty trustee who benefits the beneficiaries in fairness. As Paul says in verse 2, “Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.”

 

So, has God himself ever entrusted you with something? You know, like a million dollars or something of great value like that. Something like, a calling to share the mysteries God has revealed? Or something like a spiritual gift, or a talent, or life itself? You didn’t think that you generated those things on your own, did you? Paul opens this chapter clarifying his own calling: “This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed.”

The Bible is not just another ancient book, filled with opinions and strange happenings, you know. And your own gifting and calling are not by chance, either. All of what you and I have is simply a gift entrusted to us to manage until we meet again. 

My education, my vocabulary, my upbringing, my body, my brain, my stomach, my mouth, my ears, my eyes—they were all created for this moment, right now, when I can declare the things of God. I simply must be faithful. Faithful to the calling. A faithful steward of the gifts. A servant who carries out the wishes of his master. So I repeat: “Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.”

When you are given a trust, it is not your responsibility to be clever, or to manipulate or change the trust. You simply must carry out whatever the benefactor wants you to do. Your motives might be wrong. Others may not like what you do. You might have an opinion, so that you would change the way it is handled if you could. But that is not your duty. Your duty is only one thing: “Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.”

I might try to advise you differently. I might judge you as unworthy to manage what you were given. I might think you are doing a poor job. None of that matters a bit. The only thing that matters is whether you carry out the will of the benefactor. And that will only be known when you complete your work of being a trustee of that trust. Paul says in verse 5, “Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God.”

I suppose you are getting his point by now. Being an apostle is not a chosen career for Paul. There is no ladder of success that he is climbing. Watch the money, and you’ll see that it is not flowing from the masses to Paul. He writes, “To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world—right up to this moment.”

So, how about you and me? Are we willing to go to the lengths that Paul followed to advance his Lord’s good news? If so, we will receive the same reward as he has been receiving for these many years. Is it worth it? Just ask Paul! Amen.