The Sign of Stewardship

By Bradford C. Newton

When our son Tyler was 3 years old, he and his big sister were watching Sesame Street on the local PBS station. Suddenly Bert and Ernie cut away to a smiling man who obviously didn’t live on Sesame Street He reminded Tyler and Amanda that only through their generous financial support could fine children’s programming like Sesame Street remain on the air. It was pledge month for PBS, and this daily interruption was not “chasing the clouds away” for our two kids. Suddenly Tyler turned to his mother in exasperation, “Mommy, they’re going to be raising money until Jesus comes to take us home to heaven.”

“Stewardship equals money.” True or False? The typical Sabbath call for the offering references our tithes and the many needs for our offerings to support the school, pay the bills, and support the work of the local church. I’m certainly not opposed to collecting funds to maintain and grow the mission of the Seventhday Adventist Church. In the Pacific Union Conference, the financial faithfulness of our members continues to say, “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.” Thank you for all you are doing to invest in the work of God here and in the global mission of this church. My family joins you in this giving.

But is it all about the money? Stewardship is defined as “the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care.” Christian stewardship takes this further by identifying God Himself as the owner and humanity as managers. But is there more that signifies our stewardship commitment to the Lord?

But is it all about the money?

No doubt you’ve heard it said that stewardship is the commitment of your whole life—time, talent, and treasure—to God. Ellen White describes this quality of being: “Let a living faith run like threads of gold through the performance of even the smallest duties. Then all the daily work will promote Christian growth. There will be a continual looking unto Jesus. Love for Him will give vital force to everything that is undertaken ” ( Christ’s Object Lessons , p. 360; emphasis added). She describes a wholistic picture of a grateful life of stewardship. Bursting forth from this heart of gratitude and joy comes financial resources for God’s work.

I believe that there exists an even more encompassing sign of our stewardship. It serves as the weekly reminder of the wholistic, lifealtering, transformative “vital force” that God provides to us. The most significant outward recognition of our stewardship relationship to God is not our money but the seventh-day Sabbath. How is the seventh-day Sabbath the profound sign of our stewardship relationship with Jesus?

The Sabbath is the sign of our completeness in God

Our culture chases the mirage of image and material success with unparalleled passion. The focal point of life is self, personal control and preferences, and the fulfillment of one’s own dreams to the exclusion of the well-being of others.

The apostle Paul stood on Mars Hill in Athens to answer for his preaching of Jesus and the resurrection. Acts 17:28 records Paul’s counterbalance to our own cultural obsessions:

“For in Him we live and move and have our being.” These few words point to our origin (Creation), God’s animating power in us today (Jesus’ saving grace), and our hopeful future with Him (Jesus’ second coming). Nowhere is the sign of all this more exemplified than the seventh-day Sabbath.

“Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made” (Genesis 2:3, NKJV). The crowning moment of the week was the creation of Adam and Eve. They awoke to a complete world in which their only work was to revel with joy and thanksgiving in what God has done already. They were complete because their Creator had made them so.

Not surprisingly, the final message to humanity in Revelation 14 is a call back to Creation: Worship Him who made the heaven and the earth—and who made YOU! When we choose the 24 hours of the Sabbath to rest, we can adopt by faith the same repose of completeness as our first parents.

All we are and all we have begins and ends with Him because we are created as daughters and sons of God. As I remember the Sabbath day weekly, it serves as the greatest sign that we are here to manage all He has given us. We are managers of every aspect of life for His glory and honor.

The Sabbath as a sign of our salvation by grace alone

Conduct an Amazon search for books on “sabbath” and you’ll find scores of results. In our strained and hectic society, the role of sabbath rest is practically relevant to our current pursuit of work/life balance. The Sabbath directs us to our completeness in God as our Creator. But beyond the physical, the Sabbath speaks to our spiritual completeness as well. Just as we cease our labors on the seventh day, we also relinquish our deficient and distorted efforts to earn spiritual rest that can only be imparted by faith in Jesus. Hebrews 4:10 says, “For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His” (NKJV). To the Romans, Paul writes that we are “being justified freely by His grace” (Romans 3:24, NKJV) and “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1, KJV).

To remember the weekly Sabbath day, we embrace the great sign that we are saved through no works of our own but by grace alone. The Sabbath is the great outward sign of being a steward of the gift of salvation found in the death, resurrection, and intercessory work of Jesus Christ. Each week on the Sabbath we proclaim that Jesus is the true source of our meaning, purpose, and future. Praise God! Ellen White summarizes it so beautifully, “To all who receive the Sabbath as a sign of Christ's creative and redeeming power, it will be a delight. Seeing Christ in it, they delight themselves in Him. The Sabbath points them to the works of creation as an evidence of His mighty power in redemption. While it calls to mind the lost peace of Eden, it tells of peace restored through the Saviour” ( The Desire of Ages , p. 289).

JAMES CHRISTENSEN