LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1981, Page 99

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Hie will supply us with every good and perfect gift we
need for a life of faithful stewardship.

We simply can’t afford to forget that it is precisely
-.. through the sharing of this Word about our God, about
. His grace and mercy toward us in Christ, and in no
: other way, that the Holy Spirit comes into our hearts
and enables us to see and accept our stewardship as “the
free and joyous activity of the child of God and God’s
family, the church in managing all of life and life’s
resources for God’s purposes.”

... [think we need to be reminded too that it is He who
makes us anxious to hear what God says to us about our
stewardship in the psalms and in other passages which
we have before us today.

Genesis 1 and Psalm 24: The first two verses of the
‘psalm read: “The world and all thatisin it belong to the
‘Lord; the earth and all who live on it are His. He built it
‘on the deep waters beneath the earth and laid its
foundations in the ocean depths.” The psalm teaches
very clearly that our Creator has given us the earth to
- manage, but certainly has notrelinquished His claim to
any part of it. It was His, is His, and will be His for all
- “4ime. He owns it. By His power it came into being, and
He used His power to make it according to His own plan.

One of the most beautiful testimonies to God’s
--ownership of creation and of the earth is found in
1 Chronicles, Chapter 29. Here the Lord gives us an
account of what David had to say in his prayer in
preparation for the building of the temple. If you read
the full chapter you'll find a list of the gifts that David
‘brought to the Lord, and a list of those gifts which were
brought to the Lord by the leaders in Israel, and then
finally a reference to the gifts that the people had
‘brought. Let’s look especially at verses 10 through 16.
They read:

There in front of the whole assembly King David praised
the Lord. He said, ‘Lord God of our ancestor Jacob, may
You be praised forever and ever! You are great and power-
ful, glorious, splendid, and majestic. Everything in heaven
and earth is Yours, and You are King, supreme Ruler over
all. All riches and wealth come from You; You rule every-
thing by Your strength and power; and You are able to
make anyone great and strong. Now, our God, we give You
thanks, and we praise Your glorious name. Yet my people
and I cannot really give You anything, because everything
is a gift from You, and we have only given back what is
Yours already. You know, O Lord, that we pass through life
like exiles and strangers, as our ancestors did. Our days are
like a passing shadow, and we cannot escape death. O Lord,
our God, we have brought together all this wealth to builda
temple to honor Your holy name, but it all came from You
and all belongs to You.

. Ithought you would appreciate these words because
of what the Almighty has done for us through Forward
in Remembrance and because of what Wil Hyatt and
others have reminded us of constantly since the last
convention. From the beginning they have told us to
look to God for blessing upon the Appeal, recognizing
that it all belongs to Him and that everything we return
to Him is after all His own.

One other point I’d have you observe is brought out
in this same chapter of Chronicles in verse 18. It reads:
“Lord God of our ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,

ESSAYS ON STEWARDSHIP 99

keep such devotion forever strong in Your people’s
hearts and keep them always faithful to You.” I submit
to you that a part of faithful stewardship is the con-
tinued recognition by the people of God that the earth is
His, and indeed the fullness thereof.

But in addition to this testimony from the Scriptures,
it is important to note that our observation of man’s
inability to control creation should serve as evidence
that creation, the earth, remains in God’s hands. Any
one of you who has witnessed the fury of a tornado or
has seen the havoc that even a simple flood can wreak or
who has contemplated seriously the immense amount of
power and energy radiated by the sun in the space ofa
few moments has all the proof he needs that God is still
in charge.

Note also that God’s ownership of the earth isn’t
diminished by the fact that Gen. 1:28 tells us that He
gave mankind the earth to use and to manage. If you
look at this section of Genesis 1, beginning with verse
28, you will see clearly that God has given us the
privileged authority to manage His earth, but that He
certainly hasn’t given up His ownership of it in any
way. In fact, as divine Owner, He’s provided us with an
outline to follow in our management of creation. It is to
be managed so that it serves the best interests of all His
creatures. That’s very plain here.

In addition the psalmist in Psalm 8 and and St. Paul
in Romans, Chapter 1, remind us that we are to manage
creation in such a way that it brings greater glory to
God’s holy name. The psalmist puts it very beautifully:
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the fir-
mament showeth His handiwork” (Ps. 19:1 KJV). St.
Paul gives us another profound glimpse of all of this
when he writes that creation reveals God’s external
power and His divine nature as well. The very least that
we and the church and all mankind should do, then, is to
view the earth with awe and reverence. Accept it as
God’s own wonderfully unique and miraculous proof of
His existence and treat it accordingly. Obviously, it is
meant to be a blessing for all generations. Not only for
just a few of them and not only for ours.

Certainly as Christians we have an even greater
responsibility than others in this regard, and this is true
because the Holy Spirit has revealed so much to us
about God’s grace toward us. The Spirit teaches, for
example, that God has graciously and lovingly en-
trusted His earth and its resources to our care. The
picture the Scriptures paint of this aspect of grace
begins with the revelation in Genesis of how God gives
us a special place among His earthly creatures. We are
reminded there that He singled us out from among all
His creatures and created us in His own image.

The picture is enlarged as we go on and read how,
even after our first parents sinned, God didn’t strip
away from us the privileged responsibility we have of
caring for His creation. Sin has made it infinitely more
difficult for us to carry out this responsibility, to be sure.
At the same time, the responsibility remains ours. On
this basis alone there is no other reasonable course open
for us whom the psalmist describes as “mere men” but