Turn in our Bibles to Exodus
chapter 18. Now, do you know what a steward
is? If you have an owner of an estate,
he'll take one of his servants and he'll make him the steward
over his household. He's to be over the house. He's to give other servants and
children in the house the provision that the owner has provided for
him to give to them. Moses was God's steward. He was God's steward. And all
God's saints are stewards of God's grace. The pastor is a
steward to the brethren that Christ has entrusted to him to
minister to. Older believers are stewards
to younger believers. Husbands to wives and children. Fathers and mothers to their
children. Elder siblings are stewards to
the younger siblings. Peter said, As every man hath
received the gift, even so minister the same one to another as good
stewards of the manifold grace of God. Paul said, it's required
in stewards that a man be found faithful. And that's what we
see in Moses in our text. We learn what it is to be a faithful
steward of the manifold grace of God. But even as we look at
Moses here being faithful in his stewardship, remember, our
righteousness, the perfection even of our stewardship is not
by our faithfulness. But it's by Christ who is the
preeminent steward. The Hebrew writer said, Moses
verily was faithful in all his house as a servant, but Christ
as a son. To whose house we are if we hold
fast our confidence in Christ to the end. Christ is the preeminent
steward. In all things Christ has the
preeminent. And He's our righteousness even
in our stewardship. Now our text here is Exodus 18,
and Moses and the children of Israel have come to Rephidim
at the mount of God. I believe in this text Moses
has actually already received the law of God even though that
comes in chapter after this. But the text begins here with
Moses' father-in-law bringing Moses' wife and his two sons
back to him. We read here in verse 1, When
Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses' father-in-law, heard of
all that God had done for Moses and for Israel, his people, and
that the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt, then Jethro, Moses'
father-in-law, took Zipporah, Moses' wife, after he had sent
her back, after Moses had sent her back to Jethro. Jethro brings
her to Moses and her two sons. Now first of all, a faithful
steward must part with anything that will hinder us from the
work God has given us. We must part with anything that
will hinder us. This is saying that Jethro is
bringing Zipporah, Moses' wife, after he had sent her back to
Jethro. You remember back in Exodus 4,
Moses had not circumcised one of his sons. And God was going
to kill Moses because of that. Because he had not done that.
And Moses submitted to God. And Zipporah was required to
do the work. She was required to circumcise
her son. But she was not happy about it.
She was angry with Moses about it. And seeing that she was going
to be a hindrance to him in the work he had to do in Egypt, temporarily
Moses sent Zipporah and his sons back to live with her father-in-law. And then Moses went on to Egypt.
And that shows us, brethren, if we would be faithful stewards
to God, we must part with anything that's going to hinder us in
worshipping and serving our Lord Jesus Christ. This is why a believer
never wants to marry an unbeliever, because it will be a hindrance
to you in worshipping and serving the Lord. But Moses' wife and
his son shows us this applies to anything, even that which
is dearest to us. We have to part with it. We have
to set it aside, even if it's temporarily, so that it doesn't
prevent us from doing this work God's given us, whatever it is.
Now as faithful as Moses was in this, Christ, the Son of God,
was his righteousness in parting with that which hindered. He
was His righteousness. Christ Jesus, Philippians 2 tells
us, He laid aside His glory and His power as the Son of God and
He took flesh. He took the form of a servant.
He made Himself of no reputation and He came forth doing the will
of God. And when He was preaching, you
remember on one occasion He's preaching. And they came to him
and they said, Behold, your mother and your brethren are outside.
They want to talk to you. Did he let that hinder the work
he was doing? Did he stop preaching and go
outside to talk to his mother and father? No, he stretched
forth his hands to those to whom he ministered and he said, Behold,
my mother and my father, my sister and my brethren, those that do
the will of God, those are my brethren. But He let nothing
hinder Him from this work. Christ is our perfection, even
in letting nothing hinder us from worship and service to God. And God honors those that honor
Him. We see that here in that a year later, God brought Moses'
wife and his children back to Moses. It had been over a year,
and he brings them back to Moses. And it pictures how that Christ
honors His faithful stewards. As we let nothing hinder us in
preaching and promoting and sending forth the gospel of Christ, this
shows us a picture of how Christ honors that faithfulness. He
draws His people and brings them under the sound of the gospel
to hear what Christ has done for us. It says in verse 1, it
says, When Jethro heard of all that God had done for Moses,
and for Israel his people, and that the Lord had brought Israel
out of Egypt, then he came. He came. And that's a picture. God uses faithful stewards. He's made faithful to bring his
lost elect under the gospel. to hear what Christ has done
for His people, how He's delivered His people out of bondage. And
those Christ that He reconciled by His blood are brought to Him. Just like Moses' bride and His
children were brought to Him, Christ's bride and His children
are brought to Him. We see it here in their names.
Zipporah here was a Midianite. That means she was an Ethiopian.
Now listen to this description of her. She was black, she was
sinful, she was a heathen from a cursed race. That's every one
of us who God saves by His grace. Gershom was the name of one of
the sons. His name means a stranger in
a strange land. That's what God makes us to be
by His grace when He gives us faith in Christ. He makes us
strangers in this land, in this world. And the last son there,
or the second son's name was and that means God is my help,
my salvation. And that's where God brings us.
He brings us to declare God as my salvation. So in that we see
the Lord God said, I will honor them that honor me. And I'll
lightly esteem them that lightly esteem me. And so we see here,
he honored that faithfulness that he put in Moses. And he
honors his stewards. We part with whatever hinders
us. Now secondly, faithful stewards must give God all the glory in
salvation in the gospel we preach and promote. God has to have
all the glory. He has, it's his works we're
declaring. That's what the gospel is. The
declaration of his works. Today I'm declaring to you a
work, a true work of righteousness that God brings His children
to do in being faithful stewards. But as I'm declaring that to
you, that's really not my message. My main message is the works
of our Lord and what He's done to redeem us. Look here in verse
8, Moses told his father-in-law all that the Lord had done He
told him all that the Lord had done. He didn't tell him what
he had done. Moses didn't say, this is what I've done. He told
him all that the Lord had done unto Pharaoh and to the Egyptians
for Israel's sake and all the travail that had come upon them
by the way and how the Lord delivered them. Don't you know that was
a good meeting? Moses sat down that night after
they ate supper and Moses began to declare everything the Lord
had done. He told Jethro how the Lord had
provided a Passover lamb for all the firstborn in Israel. He didn't provide that firstborn
lamb for the Egyptians. He provided the firstborn lamb
for those in Egypt. And that lamb died in their place. That's a picture of Christ, our
Passover, who was sacrificed for His people. And when God
saw the blood on the doorframe, He passed over. And that's when
God sees the blood upon His children. There is therefore now no condemnation
of them who believe on Christ. Moses declared how that God enriched
them by giving the Egyptians a heart just to give them their
riches when they left out of Egypt. And that's our message. We must declare how that God
has enriched us with the unsearchable riches of Christ in making Christ
our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption. That's all you need. That's everything
we need. We need wisdom, righteousness,
sanctification, and redemption. God's enriched us with the unsearchable
riches of Christ. We have it all in Christ. Moses told him how that God brought
them to the Red Sea and destroyed all their enemies in the Red
Sea and brought them to the other side to sing songs of redemption.
That's our message. How that all Christ's people
were baptized. We were immersed in the Red Sea
of Christ's blood when He was immersed under the judgment of
God. And by that Christ destroyed all our enemies and brought us
to sing songs of redemption, giving Him the glory. Moses told
them how they went to Marah and the waters were bitter and how
the Lord provided the tree that made the water sweet. He preached
Jehovah Rapha to him, the Lord that healeth thee. That's our
message. Christ has taken that bitter cup of the fury of God's
wrath out of our hand and he's given us that sweet cup of wine
whereby we remember Christ's blood that redeemed us. He declared
to him how that God provided manna from heaven and how that
He gave them Sabbath rest and that's what we declare. We declare
how God sent His Son who is the bread from heaven and how God
in Him has given us rest. Christ is our Sabbath. We rest
from all our works in Christ. And then He preached to him,
He declared to him how that God provided water from the smitten
rock by whose stripes Christ by whose stripes we're born again
by the Holy Spirit. That's with the water picture.
From Christ the smitten rock comes the water, the Holy Spirit,
whereby we have life. He declared to them how that
Amalek came and attacked them and how that God provided an
overthrow of Amalek for them. And that's our message. We preach
Jehovah Nissi, the Lord our banner. Christ is exalted as Moses held
up that rod on the hill. And when Christ is exalted in
our hearts, in the gospel, at the right hand of God, when He's
exalted, He overthrows our sinful nature and makes us triumphant. But, even when he's preaching,
even when Moses is declaring everything the Lord had done,
giving God all the glory in his preaching, Moses isn't depending
on his preaching to make him righteous. Moses' righteousness,
even in declaring the works of God, is Christ Jesus, the preeminent
steward, the preeminent prophet of God. I don't look to my preaching
to make me righteous or make me accepted with God. There's
my sin, Mars, even preaching. Christ is my righteousness who
preached perfectly. Christ came forth and He said,
my doctrine's not mine, it's His that sent me. And He preached
the Word of God and He did it faithfully, brethren. Now, Jethro
was not saved. God didn't save Jethro. He went
back to his idol gods when this was all over with. But we see
how God honors faithful stewardship by bringing our hearers to rejoice
in Christ. Verse 9 says, Jethro rejoiced
for all the goodness which the Lord had done to Israel. whom
he had delivered out of the hand of the Egyptians. Verse 11, he
said, Now I know the Lord is greater than all gods. And he
brought some offerings, and he sat down in fellowship with God's
people. We declare God's wonderful works
and Christ honors faithfulness. He brings His people to rejoice
in the Lord, to rejoice in His works. He brings them to exalt
Him alone. He brings us to come to Him by
faith with nothing but Christ pictured in those sacrifices
and offerings that Jethro offered. And He gives us sweet fellowship
with our brethren. This is what He does to those
to whom we preach, who hears the message. So when we speak,
we're not going to speak with excellency of speech and of wisdom. We're not going to try to impress
people with our knowledge and our wisdom and we're not going
to try to talk over their heads. We're going to make the message
clear. And we're going to preach only Christ and Him crucified. We have to declare the wonderful
works of God. We must. Thirdly here, we see
that a faithful steward, as a faithful steward, we give ourselves completely
to whatever God puts in our hand to do. Whatever it is, big or
small, that God gives you to do in His kingdom, give yourself
to it with everything you have. He says here in In verse 13, I remember this,
Moses has not seen his wife and children in over a year. But
look where he is the very next morning. Verse 13, It came to
pass on the morrow that Moses sat to judge the people, and
the people stood by Moses from the morning until the evening. You would think that Moses would
have taken a few days off to spend with his wife. He hadn't
seen her in over a year, and his children, and his father-in-law,
but he didn't do that. Next morning, he's right back
doing what God gave him to do. Now this is very timely for me. The Lord is... His timeliness
is an amazing thing, and this is very timely. I'm preparing
this message this week, and sat down Monday morning, started
working on this, and just about prepared the whole message Monday.
And my father-in-law came to see me this weekend. And Cynthia, my sister-in-law,
and my niece, and my nephew, and my mother-in-law. And we
have a tendency, we're prone to think that when friends come
to town, family comes to town, we're prone to think, what will
they think of me? Unless I take off work and spend
some time with them or miss services and spend time with them, what
will they think of me? You know what we ought to say is, what
will they think of my God if I do? I remember not long after Chris
Cunningham came to Franklin as our pastor, he told me this story
about his brother one time wanting him to go camping. And Chris
taught the Bible class under Brother Jack Shanks, pastor at
New Canning then. And Chris went to Brother Jack
and he asked him, he said, you know, my brother wants me to
go camping and he said, I think if I went with him, maybe I could
talk to him, bear witness of Christ to him. It'd be a good
opportunity. Jack said, you really want to
bear witness to it? He said, be here Sunday morning, preach
this Bible class and you'll bear witness to it. That's how we
bear witness to Christ, brethren. Let nothing interfere with the
worship and service of Christ. But even if you do this to the
best of your ability, you're not going to be made righteous
by this. Christ is our perfect righteousness in this also. You
remember when Joseph and Mary came and they found Christ in
the temple and he was there. He was teaching those scholars,
those old fellows that were scholars in Israel. And he's in there
as a child teaching them. And when Moses and Joseph come
to him, these are his earthly parents. What did he tell them?
I must be about my father's business. I must be about my father's business. Christ is our righteousness even
in giving ourselves to the work God's given us to do. He's the
perfect, faithful, righteous servant of God. Now lastly, faithful
stewards must never use carnal principles. We must never listen
to carnal counsel, and we must never use carnal, fleshly principles
to determine anything we're going to do in spiritual matters. Never. And it says here in verse
14, this was Moses' one mistake, or one of his mistakes. Verse
14, it says, When Moses' father-in-law saw all that he did to the people,
He said, What is this thing that thou doest to the people? Why
sittest thou thyself alone, and all the people stand by thee
from morning unto evening? And Moses said unto his father-in-law,
Because the people come unto me to inquire of God. Now listen
to that. The people come to me to inquire
of God. When they have a matter, they
come unto me, and I judge between one another. and I do make them
know the statutes of God and His laws." And Moses' father-in-law
said unto him, the thing that thou doest is not good. And his
father-in-law began to tell him what he needed to do and he basically
told him to set up a court system like what we have in our country.
There will be people who are judges of a great many people
who take the lesser matters and then from there they go to district
court where there is only a few fewer judges and they judge the
people that come to them. And it goes on like that but
only the top, hardest, most difficult matters then come to Moses. Moses would be like the Supreme
Court. They come to Moses then. And that sounded reasonable,
I mean according to the flesh you understand Moses is sitting
there, he's talking to all these people, settling these matters
with all these people that are coming to him from morning to
evening. And it's taking a lot of time for him and for them
because there's so many people. And it just makes carnal sense,
it makes good reason in our minds, fleshly speaking, to do what
Jethro said. But Jethro is a heathen idolater
here. This man does not know God. And
he's judging by carnal sight and he's reasoning by carnal
reasoning in what he told Moses. Moses had given God this great
honor. He'd given Him this great privilege.
Moses is leading the one church of God in the whole world at
this time. And there's probably around 4
million people by this time. And Moses, he's given the honor
and the privilege to be God's mouthpiece to these people. That's an honor. That's a great
privilege he's given. Whatever God's given you to do
for His people, brethren. I don't care if it's just a very
small thing that's not even recognized. Consider it to be the greatest
honor and the greatest privilege because it is. It is. If God gives us anything in His
kingdom to do, that's a great honor. That's a great privilege.
But in spiritual matters, we must never take the advice of
carnal men using carnal reasoning and operating under carnal principles. Never. Jethro appealed to Moses'
flesh. He said there in verse 18, Thou
wilt surely wear away both Thou and this people that is with
Thee, for this thing is too heavy for Thee. Thou art not able to
perform it Thyself alone. Well, that would be true if God's
people did anything by our strength. That would be true. But we can't
believe by our own strength. We can't persevere in faith by
our own strength. We can't establish the law and
righteousness by our own strength. There's nothing you and I do
by our own strength in spiritual things. Christ promised to be Moses'
strength. Go back to Exodus chapter 3 and
look at verse 12. This is when Moses is first going. Christ is speaking to him in
the burning bush. Remember this? And Christ is
speaking to him here. And Moses said, verse 11, Who
am I that I should go to Pharaoh, that I should bring forth the
children of Israel out of Egypt? Well, the Lord wasn't calling
Moses to do it. Look at what the Lord says to
him. He said, Certainly I will be with thee, and this shall
be a token unto you, that I have sent thee. This is how you are
going to know I sent you, and I am with you, and I am doing
the work, Christ said. When thou hast brought forth
the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God upon this very
mountain. You know where Moses is when
Jethro gives him this advice and Moses takes it? You know
where He is? He's in that mount with those
people that Christ brought out of Egypt. Just like Christ promised. That's where He's standing. In
the mount of God. Right there where Christ revealed
Himself at the beginning. And He said, I'm going to bring
you out. I'm going to bring the children of Israel out. I'm going
to bring you to this mount right here. And that's how you're going
to know I'm with you. So this is what aggravates Moses'
mistake here. He should have seen this is the
promise Christ made to me. I'm standing right here where
Christ said He'd bring me. And I'm standing right here with
the people Christ said He'd bring out. And that should have let
Moses know Christ is going to be my strength from here on out.
He's going to be my strength to judge these people. He's standing at the very mountain.
Christ is the strength of His people. He's the strength of
His people. He was Moses' strength. Moses
didn't do anything he had done up to this point in his own fleshly
strength. Nothing. Christ was his strength
to do what he had done. Christ was his strength. And
what did Christ say? My strength is made perfect.
My strength is manifest in perfection through your weakness. He takes
you and I who are, there's not many wise men, not many noble
after the flesh. He takes nobody's. Why does He do that? To show
that no flesh is going to glory in His presence. But He that
glories, we're going to glory in the Lord. He's our strength.
Jethro said in verse 19, back in Exodus 18 and 19, he said,
Harken now unto my voice and God will be with you. He was
already with Him. The Lord was already with Moses.
And He says, He told Moses to choose out these men to judge
all these lesser cases, and so that only the hardest cases will
be brought to Moses. And look at verse 22. In verse
22 He says, there in the middle, towards the end, He says, So
it shall be easier for thyself. He appealed to Him on the basis
of making it easier for Himself. Brethren, don't do anything in
the Kingdom of God, anything, don't do anything in the Kingdom
of God from the carnal principle of making it easier on yourself.
Nothing. Nothing. When God sent His only
begotten Son to die for His people, Did God make it easy on Himself? When Christ came down from Heaven's
glory and took flesh and no reputation, so that when we saw Him we wouldn't
see anything carnally that we would desire in Him, so that
we would know this is all of God's grace, And when he bore
the sin of his people, and he bore the fury of God's strict
unbending justice, so that God could be declared just and the
justifier, and the righteousness of God would be manifest. When
Christ did that, did he make it easier on himself? We must determine what we should
do by the Word of God, We don't even want to judge things by
providence. Providence helps you sometimes,
but sometimes not. Sometimes not. You remember Elimelech
in Ruth, in the book of Ruth, he judged by providence. And
so he saw there was a famine in Bethel and that Moab had bread,
so he took his family to Moab. And God killed him and his sons. We don't judge by providence.
We determine what we ought to do by the Word of God. What does God's Word say? We
determine what we ought to do by what gives God all the glory
and what is good for His people. And that is in accordance with
these other things. What does God's Word say and
what gives God the glory? That's how we determine what
to do. We don't determine by carnal reason or carnal sense
or what fleshly speaking makes sense. We don't, we don't, we
look at God's Word. God's Word. You know from Egypt,
from the time the Lord sent Moses to Egypt up to this point right
here, as long as Moses depended upon Christ for his strength, He accomplished everything Christ
sent him to do. Everything. Nothing was too hard
for the Lord. Everything that the Lord sent
Moses to accomplish, the Lord being Moses' strength, Moses
looking to the Lord alone, he was able to do everything the
Lord sent him to do. But the moment he heard Jethro
and he started considering himself and he started considering how
big this work was. That's when he gave up. That's
when he stopped. I heard a woman this week talking.
And she said, she was talking about how she married her husband
and they married young and things were great. And she said, but
about six years in, she said, I began thinking about all the
things I wanted to do in life. She began thinking about herself.
And she said, and I began thinking about how I won't be able to
accomplish those things with this man. And she said, and it became unbearable
for me to be married to him any longer. And she left him. She
was fine when she wasn't considering herself. When she started considering
herself, it became too heavy of a burden. And I can tell you
this, brethren, from experience, anytime as a pastor, as a father,
I mean as a husband, as a father, as a friend, anytime that I have
found the burden too heavy, it was always because I was considering
myself. Always. Always. Any time I've ever found
fault with my wife, it's been because I was thinking of me
and how it wasn't fair and how it was just selfish. And I guarantee
you this, brethren, that's so of you too. I know it is. On another occasion, how do you
know this was a mistake by Moses? Because you got in Scripture
sometimes and the Lord doesn't tell you In one passage, you
can go to another passage and he'll give you some light on
it. And in Numbers 11, in verse 11, Moses said to the Lord, he
said, Why have I not found favor in your sight? Can you believe
Moses said that? Why have I not found favor in
my sight? that thou layest the burden of
all this people upon me. Have I conceived all this people?
Have I begotten them that thou shouldest say unto me, carry
them in thy bosom as a nursing father, bear the sucking child
unto the land which thou swearest unto their fathers? And Moses
was looking at himself at that point. Does God ever tell us
to look to ourselves? Is there any time that God says... The only time He says to look
to yourself is to examine what God has done for you. But here's
what He tells us. Lay aside every weight and the
sin that does so easily beset us. And that sin is unbelief
from looking at ourselves. Lay it aside. and run with patience
the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author
and finisher of our faith. That's who He tells us to look
to. And what do we see when we look to Christ? We see one who
endured the cross. Who endured despising the shame
of the cross. We see one, we consider him that
endured such a contradiction of sinners against himself. Last,
he said, when you start considering yourself, you'll be wearied and
faint in your minds. That's what he's telling them.
And he said, If you do consider yourself, he said, consider this,
you have not resisted unto blood striving against sin. What he's
telling us brethren is when the load gets heavy, look to the
cross, it will lighten. It will lighten. Whatever you're
doing, whatever it is, in any capacity, in spiritual, being
a steward of God and the burden gets heavy to you as a as a pastor,
as a husband, as a wife, as a mother, father, sister, brother, whatever. Look to the cross. That burden
of lightning on you, it will get a whole lot lighter. Our burden is called a light
affliction. It's just for a moment. Philippians
4.13, Paul said, I can do all things through Christ which strengthens
me. Where was he when he said that?
He's in prison for preaching the gospel of Christ. And he
said, and most all of my brethren have forsaken me. And he said,
I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me. He said in 2 Corinthians 4.7,
we have this treasure in earthen vessels. We're just clay pots
in which the Lord has put this treasure in. This treasure of
the gospel, this treasure of sending forth this gospel in
the world and preaching this gospel. Why did God give this
treasure in these earthen vessels? That the excellency of the power
may be of God and not of us. That's why. So He gets all the
glory That's why He's chosen these foolish things, me and
you, that He might get all the glory. So we're not to look to
ourselves and we're not to think that the Lord's laid all this
burden on me for me to carry it. He's carrying you and the
burden. We look to Him and the burden
becomes light. If we don't want to honor God,
or we don't want the honor God has given us, and whatever it
is He's given us to do, If we don't want the honor in it, God
will give that honor to somebody else. In Numbers 11, after Moses complained,
that's where the Lord told Moses, you choose 70 men. Choose out
70 men. And the Lord said, I'll take
of the Spirit which is upon thee, and I'll put it upon them. And
they shall bear the burden of the people with thee, that thou
bear it not thyself alone. What's he teaching us there?
God does not need us. He doesn't need us. If there's
some little thing that God's put in my hand and I don't want
that honor and I don't want that privilege and I think it's too
heavy a burden for me, I'm not going to stop that work from
being carried out. God's just going to give it to somebody
else to do it and take the honor away from me. That's all that's
going to happen. Our unfaithfulness will do this
though, it will cause us to go backwards in unbelief. That's
what happened to Moses. In Numbers 11.21, Moses said,
now this is what he said here. After all of that, after the
Lord said, I'm going to take the spirit off of you and I'm
not giving more of the spirit, I'm just taking some from you
and giving it to these other men. And after that, listen to
what Moses says. Moses said, ìThe people among
whom I am are 600,000 footmen.î Thatís just the footmen. If you
consider 600,000 and they had wives and they had children,
you know, youíre talking millions of people now. But he said, ìAnd
thou hast said, I will give them flesh that they may eat a whole
month.î Moses says, ìShall the flocks and the herds be slain
for them to suffice them?î Or shall all the fish of the sea
be gathered together for them to suffice them? And the Lord
rebuked Moses. The Lord rebuked him. And the
Lord said, Is the Lord's hand waxed short? This is after he had done all
that work in Egypt and brought them through that wilderness
to where they had come. He says, You think my hand now
all of a sudden has waxed short? Thou shalt see now whether my
word shall come to pass unto thee or not. And then by making
these men judges, you know what Moses did? This is where that
problem with Korah started, right there. It was a mistake. Christ is our
righteousness in this too, brethren. He told his apostles, he's about
to go to the cross and he said, He told him he's fixed to go
to the cross. Peter rebuked him. Remember that? Peter said, Be
it far from thee, Lord. This shall not be unto thee.
Now just think if our Lord had taken that carnal counsel according
to carnal reason. He wouldn't have went to the
cross. But what did our Lord do? He said to Peter, Get thee
behind me, Satan. Thou art an offense to me, for
thou savest not the things that be of God, but those that be
of men. You see, it's Christ's perfect
faithfulness to God by which we're made righteous. That's
why in the New Testament, God doesn't mention any of this about
Moses. Any of this unbelief and this
unfaithfulness, He doesn't mention it at all because under the covenant
of grace, robed in the righteousness of Christ and His perfect faithfulness,
brethren, He said Moses was faithful in all his house. Moses never
did anything unfaithful. Because our righteousness, our
faithfulness, our perfection before God is Christ, it's not
us. So even in our stewardship, He
gets the glory. So understand this, it's a privilege
that God allows us to do anything for Him. Paul said, as we were
allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, That shows you what a privilege.
Allowed of God to be put in trust with the Gospel. And he said,
even as the Lord did that for us, so we preach the Gospel. We speak, not pleasing men, but
God which trieth our hearts. And by Christ's love for us as
our constraint, by beholding His faithfulness, His righteousness,
what He's done for us, being constrained and motivated in
our heart by His love for us, brethren, let us be faithful
stewards. One, by setting aside any hindrance.
Two, by only promoting the message that gives God all the glory
and salvation. Three, by giving ourselves completely
to whatever God is putting our hands to do. And fourthly, by
never doing anything by carnal principles and carnal reason,
but only by looking to Christ our strength. That's a faithful
steward. Amen. Let's stand together. I didn't say this at the beginning
because I didn't want to point you to the clock, but I prepared
this message to be the main message. And then I remembered this is
the first Sunday. And I wanted to preach out of
Romans for that. So the next message is probably
a little shorter. But anyhow, let's go to the Lord
in prayer. Father, we thank you for this
word. We pray, Lord, you really and truly would make us faithful
stewards. Consider the honor you give us
to do anything in your name. Lord, make us look only always
to Christ our strength, Christ our righteousness. And trust
that He is the one who's holding us up, who's going to not let
us fall, who's going to make us faithful, and who's going
to bring us into your presence accepted. Let us not look to
ourselves, to any of this work you've given us, any of this
privilege. Let us never look to it thinking
this is how we're going to be saved. But let us do it looking
to Christ, who is our Savior, our righteousness, our all. Lord,
we ask these things in His precious name. Amen.