Luke 16:1-8 And he said also to his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward… I. THE OFFICE OF STEWARD. 1. A steward is a man who administers a property which is not his own. His relation to property is distinguished on the one hand from that of those who have nothing to do with the property, because the steward has everything to do with it that he can do for its advantage; and, on the other hand, from that of the owner of the property, because the steward is no sense the owner of it, but only the administrator. His duty towards it is dependent on the will of another, and it may terminate at any moment. 2. The office of a steward is before all things a trust. It represents in human affairs a venture which the owner of a property makes, upon the strength of his estimate of the character of the man to whom he delegates the care of the property. 3. An account must at some time be rendered to some one. (1) We are accountable to public opinion. (2) To our own conscience. (3) To God. If man has no account to give, no wrong that he does has the least consequence.If man has no account to give, no wrong that is done to him, and that is unpunished by human law, will ever be punished. If man has no account to give, life is a hideous chaos; it is a game of chance in which the horrible and the grotesque alternately; bury out of sight the very last vestiges of a moral order. If man has no account to give, the old Epicurean rule in all its profound degradation may have much to say for itself (1 Corinthians 15:32). II. HUMAN LIFE IS A STEWARDSHIP. We are stewards, whether as men or as Christians; not less in the order of nature than in the order of grace. 1. Every owner of property is in God's sight a steward of that property, and, sooner or later, He will demand an account. Has it, however little, been spent conscientiously; or merely as the passion or freak of the moment might suggest? 2. Or, the estate of which we are stewards is a more interesting and precious one than this. It is situated in the world of the mind, in the region where none but knowledge and speculation and imagination and taste have their place and sway. Yet all this is not ours, but God's. He is the Author of the gifts which have laid out the weed of taste and thought and knowledge; and each contributor to that world, and each student, or even each loiterer in it, is only the steward, the trustee, of endowments, of faculties which, however intimately his own when we distinguish him from other men, are not his own when we look higher and place them in the light of the rights of God. "Give an account of thy stewardship." The real Author and Owner of the gifts of mind sometimes utters this summons to His stewards before the time of death. He withdraws the mental life of man, and leaves him still with the animal life intact and vigorous. Go to a lunatic asylum, that most pitiable assortment of all the possibilities of human degradation, and mark there, at least among some of the sufferers, those who abuse the stewardship of intelligence. 3. Or, the estate of which we are stewards is something higher still. It is the creed which we believe, the hopes which we cherish, the religion in which we find our happiness and peace as Christians. With this treasure, which He has withheld from others, God has entrusted us Christians, in whatever measure, for our own good, and also for the good of our fellow-men. Religion, too, is a loan, a trust; it is not an inalienable property. 4. And then, growing out of those three estates, is the estate of influence — that subtle, inevitable effect for good or for ill which man exerts upon the lives of those around him. The question is, what use are we making of it; how is it telling upon friends, acquaintances, servants, correspondents, those who know us only from a distance — are we helping them upwards or downwards, to heaven or to hell? Surely a momentous question for all of us, since of this stewardship events may summon us before the end comes to give account. 5. And a last estate of which we are but stewards, is health and life. This bodily frame, so fearfully and wonderfully made, of such subtle and delicate texture that the wonder is that it should bear the wear and tear of time, and last as long as for many of us it does — of this we are not owners, we are only stewards. It is most assuredly no creation of our own, this body; and He who gave it us will in any case one day withdraw His gift. And yet how many a man thinks in his secret heart that if he owns nothing else, he does at least own, as its absolute master might own, the fabric of flesh and bones, nerves and veins, in which his animal life resides: that with this, at least, he may rightfully do what he will, even abuse and ruin and irretrievably degrade, and even kill; that here no question of another's right can possibly occur; that here he is master on his own ground, and not a steward. Oh, piteous forgetfulness in a man who believes that he has a Creator, and that that Creator has His rights! Oh, piteous ingratitude in a Christian, who should remember that he is not his own, but is bought with a price, and that therefore he should glorify God in his body no less than in his spirit, since both are God's! Oh, piteous illusion, the solemn moment for dissipating which is ever hurrying on apace! The Author of health and life has His own time for bidding us give an account of this solemn stewardship — often, too, when it is least expected. (Canon Liddon) Parallel Verses KJV: And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. |
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