Bible Studies

The Doctrine of Stewardship Part Two

by Doug Laird 
05/16/20
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THE DOCTRINE OF STEWARDSHIP

Part Two

The devil, as prophesied in such passages as 1Timinothy 4: 1, has a done a good job of steering the Church away from its primary mission (Matt. 28: 19, 20). The devil was wise enough to make use of all that religious authority has established within the Christian Community to accomplish this diabolical objective. The more one becomes involved with Man-made religion, the more of a spiritual adulterer (Rev. 2: 4) he/she is likely to become.

How so?

The more of a significance one places on the religious rituals and traditions of Man, the less trust and confidence one places on what God has done, God is doing, and what God will do for the people of faith.

Effective time management, be it on the organizational or individual level, BEGINS with the setting of one’s own priorities and placing the corresponding activities of one’s day at the top of his/her things to do list. Keep in mind that discipleship is a 24 hour, seven days a week lifestyle. If the Church and the individual believer is to remain on course, there is the daily need to set aside time to FOCUS on the STUDY (not merely the reading) of the Word of God. Taking one's eyes off the Bible is likened to a motorist who takes his eyes off the road ahead.

If a believer is going to be all that God desires him/her to be, the believer has to learn to do things God’s way. Here in the Church Age, God’s way is to place oneself under the teaching authority of a Biblically qualified pastor teacher that God the Holy Spirit has gifted to edify Church Age believers.

I am not saying this because I am an ordained pastor-teacher, but because I have learned from personal experience the difference from being self-taught, relying on run-of-the-milll ministers, and being edified through the teaching ministry of the a Biblically qualified and functioning pastor teacher.

Read twenty books on any given spiritual issue and you will have twenty different answers from which to choose. Ask a religious man; get a religious answer. Search the Scriptures (Acts 17: 11 ) with an open mind with the guidance of a Biblically-qualified pastor teacher who has learned how to accurately handle the word of truth (2Tim. 2 : 15), the answers you seek will be more readily found.

It is NOT the pastor or the denomination that matters (1Cor. 3: 4-7). One can find good and evil in all of them. It’s the accuracy of the doctrine being promoted that one needs to concern himself (Acts 17: 11) if he/she desires to become a disciple.

Personal time of meditation IS an essential and daily part of the post salvation spiritual life, but this should be supplemental and not the primary means for edifying one’s soul structure. If one wants God’s best, he/she must learn to do it God’s way. The function of a Biblically qualified pastor teacher is a gift from God.

A robot could be programed to go through or perform the motions of “religious” rituals.

Some may say that they have the ability to accurately interpret Scripture, and therefore don't need to connect with a pastor teacher. Speaking for myself, I have been a disciple for more than sixty years, a Christian writer for more than thirty years, an ordained pastor-teacher since 2008, but still consider myself to be a work in progress, here in 2020.

Spiritual gifts are NOT given to the individual for his own sake, but for the benefit of OTHERS (1Cor. 12: u). If you are among those have been given the gift and responsibility of a pastor teacher, then you are called to teach OTHER believers (1Cor. 12:7) in the manner and means that God has planned for you. Don’t put God, yourself, or your ministry in the limitations of a box that has been constructed by the traditions of Man.

Places and/or means to practice “religion” (Christian or otherwise) are plentiful, but locating the ones that offer the means to worship as God desires to be worshiped (John 4: 23, 24) will become a harder and harder find as we come to the end of the Church Age. God is worshiped primarily by celebrating the Lord’s Supper (1Cor. 11: 24, 25) and via the accurate teaching and application of the Word of God.

While some are more Biblically correct than others, virtually all worship services with in Christian Community offer some form and means of celebrating the Lord’s Supper (Communion). But locating one that is making disciples (students and appliers of the Word of God) as well, is becoming more difficult in these apostate times.

If one would not go to theater that only showed half the movie, why would one go to a local assembly that is not doing half the job it was commissioned to do? The making of disciples (students/appliers of the Word of God) was the inside work that it was given to do.

Would you say well done to workmen that only built half your house?

Not all, but many of the larger and more elegant places of worship are no more than monuments to the systems of religion that established and maintains them. “Holy buildings,” and a lot of what goes on within the houses of worship within the Christian Community of our day, did not exist in the first two centuries of the Church that God designed.

Evil is anything that runs contrary to the Word of God. Its hard to think of a place of worship as being evil, and the devil is banking on the fact that most Church goers would not want to look “that” closely at what is or is not taking place within their chosen houses of worship.

The truth is that if all the Man-made pageantry, practices, and objects of Man-made religion were to be removed, many of those attending would not identify what would remain as being what they think of as being Church.
Daily, personal “reading” and meditation time of/on the Word of God should be a supplemental practice of studying the Word of God under the teaching ministry of a Biblically qualified pastor teacher. If a Biblically qualified pastor teacher is not immediately available within one’s geographical area, many provide remote means to contact them. Some without COST or OBLIGATION.

Remember that God does not command us to do something and then not provide us with the time and the means to accomplish it. We must choose to set aside daily time and do it.

Pastors should approach the time he spends in private counseling with great caution. He is seldom told the whole story, affording him the opportunity to hear BOTH sides of any given conflict. If the pastor is doing His job, the members of the congregation will already have been given the answers to the questions they seek BEFORE the need arises (Matt. 7: 24-27).

The pastor’s function is to make known what the Bible has to say about any given subject, and preferably from a public pulpit, letting the chips fall where they may. The choice (and accompanying blessings/consequences) of what is done (or not done) with information that a pastor provides is between the individual and God, and not between the pastor and the recipient.

As one progresses in post salvation discipleship, the answering of one question will usually open the door to many more. The pursuit of what is not known is how one continues to grow in the knowledge of the Lord (2Pet. 3: 18).
When I was studying to be ordained, I became known as the man with many questions. When I was introduced on stage during the public and oral examination part of the ordination process, my pastor-teacher at the time jokingly commented that this would be payback for me.

In that organization, pastoral candidates had to first pass a written exam of hundreds of questions before qualifying to take part in the oral examination. In the oral examination, pastoral candidates are publically questioned on all areas of doctrines before a conference audience of hundreds of attending believers, as well as being documented and later broadcasted over the Internet.

Pastoral candidates can feel like presidential nominees testifying before a Senate Confirmation Hearing! My secular experience of giving testimony and being subjected to cross examination greatly prepared me for this procedure.

Note that in the day and age in which we live, one can “gather together-Hebrews 10: 25” and “worship” as God desires (John 4: 23,24) via remote means of communication and participation.

It is NOT the means of communication that matters most, but the accuracy of the information that is presented for the edification of souls present, and the consistency of all the activity that takes place with what is revealed in Scripture.

“Holy” buildings, “officiating” priests, and physical altars WERE (past tense) a part of the plan of God during the Old Testament dispensation, but NO SUCH things were EVER authorized or ordained (by God) to be a part of worship activity during the dispensation of the Church Age in which we live.

Such things are among the products of religion that are held in high esteem by Man, but are offensive in eyes of God (Luke 16: 14, 15/Isa. 64: 6), if and when they are elevated to equality with what has ordained for the Church Age, or worse, promote false teachings or practices.

“Now the Pharisees (the religious police of that era) who were lovers of money, were listening to all these things and were scoffing at Him. And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God.” Luke 16: 14, 15 NASB/parenthesis mine.

“For all of us (worshipers) have become like one unclean (defiled, unfit to enter the Temple), And all our righteous deeds (religious rituals) are like a filthy garment….(Isa. 64: 6 NASB parentheses mine).”

“…for man looks at the outward appearance (of people and things), but the Lord looks at the heart (what’s going on in the inside). 1Sam. 16:7 NASB/parentheses mine.

God evaluates a tree (denomination/local assembly/ministry/believer) by the fruit it produces (or fails to produce). The fruit of a local assembly or ministry that God desires is saved souls of unbelievers, and edified souls of the believers. Whatever else goes on may be of interest to Man, but not necessarily so with God.

Discipleship takes daily time devoted the study of the Word of God, and a 24-7 readiness and willingness to apply it. This is what contributes to the life long development of spiritual maturity. There will NEVER come a time, this side of Heaven, when anyone reaches the stage that he/she has learned and mastered all that the post salvation spiritual life has to offer.

When (not if) we go through the “dry spells,” feeling that we don’t need to take our discipleship any further, and /or aren’t “getting anything out of going to Church,” there is a process that begins with a 2Cor. 13:5 SELF examination. Is the dry spell because of negative choices we have made, or is it because our present choice of local assembly is not (or is no longer) providing us with what we need in order to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord?

God has solutions for either scenario.

If the dry spell is due to negative decisions that we have made, the solution is to identify (2Cor. 13: 5), confess (1John 1: 9), and then forsake (John 8: 11) the identified sin(s). Sin takes us out of fellowship with God. When out of fellowship (2Cor. 13: 14) with God, one will not have the frame of mind needed to be taught or to apply Bible Doctrine, being over-shadowed by the hostility of the fallen nature within us (Romans 7).

If the dry spell it is due to not being provided with what one needs to continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord (2Pet. 3: 18), the solution is to connect with a teaching ministry of a Biblically-qualified pastor teacher that can do so.

Dry spells can last weeks, months, years or decades with a declining appetite for God or for the things of God.

Like a participant in a torch relay race, no one, be it a pastor, a parent, another relative, friend, acquaintance, or stranger can be used of God to pass down to others anything that he/she does not first have possession of him/herself. All the doctrine that we may now know was passed down to us from someone else. It is humbling, but wise to acknowledge that regardless of how spiritually mature we may become, that there was a time when e were just as ignorant as everyone else, and that there will always be more to be learned.

Advancing disciples will develop an ongoing hunger to continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord, and will be willing to pay the Luke 14:26/2Tim. 3: 12 price for choosing to walk a different path.

To be continued…