Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2445
“Give an account of your stewardship, for you may no longer be steward.” Luke 16:2.
THE first part of this text applies to us all. The second part will apply to each one of us before long. “Give an account of your stewardship,” is a command that may be addressed to the ungodly. They are accountable to God for all that they have, or have ever had, or ever shall have. The Law of the Lord is not relaxed because they have sinned—they still remain responsible to God even though they attempt to cast off the yoke of the Almighty. As creatures formed by the Divine hand and sustained by Divine power, they are bound to serve God. And if they do not, and will not, His claims upon them do not cease—and to each of them He says, “Give an account of your stewardship.”
This text may also be applied to the children of God, to the godly—in a different sense, however, and after another fashion. For, first of all, the godly are God’s children—they are accounted as standing in Christ. They are no longer merely God’s subjects, for what they owed to God as sinners has all been discharged by Jesus Christ, their Substitute and Savior. They have, therefore, been placed on a different footing from other men. But having been saved by Grace and adopted into God’s family, they have had entrusted to them talents which they are to use to His honor and Glory. Being the Lord’s children and being saved, they become His servants—and as His servants they are under responsibility to God and they will all have to give to Him an account of their stewardship.
Look at Eli. I have no doubt that he was a saved man, but God made him a steward over his own family as well as a Prophet to Israel, and he had to give an account of his stewardship. And because he had not been faithful in it, although he was not eternally condemned, yet he was made to suffer most miserably when he was told that the whole of his house would be swept away—and also when he heard of the deaths of his sons and, as the direst news of all, learned that the Ark of God was taken by the Philistines. God visited him in his capacity of steward, made him give his account, and awarded him in this life a heavy penalty for his unfaithfulness! And I do not doubt that many a child of God who has been saved at the last, yet, being found unfaithful as a steward, has had to suffer much, has lost much of honor and much of fellowship with God—and much of high advancement in the way of Grace which he might otherwise have obtained.
David was another such steward. He was not a lost soul—I have no doubt that he is among the saved and blessed saints in Heaven—but as a steward he was not found faithful. You remember how grievously he sinned and from that moment his family was full of rebellion, his kingdom was full of trouble and he went with broken bones all the way down to his grave! Hence I may say to you, children of God, who are not under the Law—and I do not address you at all in a legal strain when I so speak to you—you also have a stewardship. Give an account of it, or else, perhaps, you may no longer be spared. Or, being spared, yet you may still have tokens of your Lord’s displeasure which you may carry with you even to your tomb. Thank God you shall leave them there! But it would be more for God’s Glory and for your own comfort to not have them at all.
I desire, on this last Sabbath evening of another year, not so much to speak to you, as to get you to talk to yourselves. So, first, we will think together upon the reasonable demand made in our text—“Give an account of your stewardship.” Next, we will examine some reasons why we should at once give an account of our stewardship. And, lastly, we will consider the weighty reason in the text which will come with force to each of us sooner or later—“You may no longer be steward.”
I. First, then, let us consider this REASONABLE DEMAND and let each one of us try to comply with it—“Give an account of your stewardship.” You man of God, you Christless soul, you aged man, you young Sister, “Give an account of your stewardship.”
First, give an account of the stewardship of your time. How have you spent it? Have not many hours been allowed to run to waste, or worse than waste, in frivolity and sin? Have you lived as a dying man should live? Have you employed your hours as remembering that they are very few and more precious than the diamonds in an emperor’s crown? What about your time? Has there not been much of it spent in indolence, in frothy talk, or that did not minister to edification? You need not accuse yourself for time spent in lawful recreation that may sustain your body and better fit it for the Lord’s service. It is well that you should have such recreation, but how much time is utterly wasted by some people, neither used for the good of this world, nor of that which is to come, but wholly frittered away in the service of sin, self and Satan? Where, for instance, did some of you spend yesterday—how did you employ its precious hours? I will but bring that one day to your remembrance—was it a well-spent day? Is that hour well spent that is passed in the company of drunks? Do you call that day well spent that is given up to rioting, or that night that is defiled with wantonness? I charge you to answer this question! For every moment that God has lent to you, He will ask for an account of what you did with it. There is not an hour since you began to understand right from wrong for which you will not have to give an account to God! If there were nothing but time entrusted to our stewardship, here is room, indeed, for heart-searching and close reckoning!