Tom Shrader introduces a new series on financial foundations by establishing the fundamental principle that God is the owner of everything in the universe, including all our possessions, time, and abilities. Using Matthew 25's parable of the talents, he explains that we are not owners but stewards who have been given possession without ownership. This perspective transforms every decision about money, time, and resources from a financial question into a spiritual one, as we will give account to God for how we manage what He has entrusted to us.
“God transfers possession to us, but not ownership to us.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Financial Foundations
Recorded: January 26, 2006
Duration: 38 min
Themes: stewardship, money, ownership, responsibility, faithfulness, accountability, resources, foundation, struggling with finances, financial stress, overspending habits, young professional, parent teaching children, new believer, planning for retirement, breadwinner
Scripture: Matthew 25:14-30, Deuteronomy 10:14, Job 41:11, Romans 1:20, Psalm 24:1-2, Psalm 50:10-12, Haggai 2:8
Theological Themes: stewardship, biblical stewardship, divine ownership, god's sovereignty, accountability, giving account, talents parable, spiritual responsibility
Full Transcript
Glad you are here. Started a new series today. This was not what I planned at all and I had three things happen this week that drove me to this series.
Number one, I read an article that said, and this does not sound right, but it said that people in the age group 50—that's a lot of this room—have less money in savings than at any time in history. Then I found an article that I had clipped and saved that said for the average family to absorb a $500 car bill, they would have to either borrow money to pay it or put it on a credit card and make minimum payments on that. So that $500 car bill would be $1,500 by the time they were done.
I'm talking to a friend, one of my better friends, which is great, better than some of my worst friends, I guess. He's 72 years old. He's a wonderful guy. We've known each other forever. He's a magnet for people who have struggles in life. They just end up with him. He said he's meeting last week with a 30-year-old guy. The guy is not married and has never been married and doesn't have kids and doesn't own a house. He makes $100,000 a year. So he said to him, what do you do with your money? And he said, I don't have any money. And he said, well, no, I mean, what do you do with it? And he said, there isn't any extra money.
Returning to Financial Foundations
I said, all right, we're going to go back to a series we did, and it would fit in our rotation five years ago called Financial Foundations. It's so much more than money, and especially this lesson. The last time I taught this, I had a guy come up to me and say, if that's true, that would radically change my life. And I said, well, it is true. When I heard that, that only reinforced for me more and more what I'm all about.
I have a chance for part of this weekend, I'm teaching Sunday at a church I've never been to. So Phoenix Bible Church, downtown. But Friday night and Saturday morning, I'm going to be with a group of guys out east somewhere. In a conference setting, my standard opening now, this is after 30 years of doing this, is let's get on the same page, which has two points. The Bible is the word of God. And here's what a Christian is. Because I just found that Christian conferences, Bible studies are filled with people who aren't Christians, which is great.
The Goal: Transformed Hearts and Radical Lives
The second one is now what? This has been, for me personally, my drive for 30 years: we want a transformed heart, salvation, and an informed mind, Bible study, that results in a radical life. So that's the process. When this guy says to me, if this is true, that would radically change how I live, I'm thinking, okay, that's it.
I have two organizations that I've been a part of in terms of the formation of the organization. One is this, Party Living. And the other was the old East Valley Bible Church. East Valley Bible Church had what I think, and I wrote it, is the best purpose statement of a church that I've come across. It was really simple: to help one another learn God's truths, and live biblically changed lives. That's what we're all about. It's not just about salvation and getting to heaven. But it's about a transformed heart and an informed mind that results in a radical life.
My contention would be that everything in your life is touched by your faith. In my relationship with Sandy, the best thing I can do for Sandy is grow close to Jesus. Now, I can't just say, not tonight, honey, I'm growing close to Jesus. But by growing close to Him, I become the husband I should be. That's been my contention for a long time in all the men's conferences, all that goes with it.
Faith Transforms Everything
The way I do business should be distinctly different, driven by the fact that I know Christ, my mind is informed. And so now I radically live in a different way. My relationship with my kids, my relationship with you, my relationship with the world, everything around it. And this lesson today is at the absolute heart of this. If you get today, it will transform the way you live. It'll affect you in a thousand ways.
The problem when we talk about money is we got to go through all these disclaimers every time. Here are the topics, starting next week: savings, borrowing, investing, giving, paying taxes, retirement. Now, the minute you say that, I got to come right back in, especially if you're new and go, okay, relax. I'm not selling you anything. If you come up and say, who's the financial person you can hook me up with? I don't do it. It's not going to happen. I don't have a product, nor am I trying to separate you from your cash. Today is life-giving, life-changing.
When you think of financial foundations, you're not going to hear what we're going to talk about in most business schools, or MBA programs, or Forbes, or Fortune, or the Wall Street Journal. Nor am I giving you, this is my perspective now, I'm not trying to give you a balanced view. I'm not trying to say, here's an issue on savings. Here's two or three sides. I'm not trying to give you five views, or four views, or three views, or two views. I want to give you what I really believe is the biblical view.
Seeing from God's Perspective
This will be the third or fourth week in a row I've mentioned this. If we use as a definition of faith, seeing our circumstances from God's perspective, it changes everything. This stuff will change, and I speak autobiographically, and it comes with a great deal of tension, and conviction, and resolution for now.
The question is a question of ownership. You'll see in your outline, general principles, and the conclusion is obviously there, and that is that God is the owner. Because God's the owner, what does that mean? What we're going to do is go macro to micro.
God's Universal Ownership
We're going big, and we're going to go from big to small. So on your outline, you can see there it is: God's the owner of the universe, the earth, everything in it, every asset. God claims ownership to everything in the universe.
Deuteronomy 10:14 says, "To the Lord your God belongs heaven, even the highest heaven." Job 41:11 declares, "He who has a claim against me must pay. Everything under the heaven belongs to me." As we get a Hubble telescope, and as we look at the universe, and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, God's jurisdiction gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
This takes us back into Romans 1:20: "For God's invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world." When God created, we can know Him as we look around. It's designed. I mean, we arrived today, and I've been doing this for 25 years, and one of my favorite things are the seasons. The study starts at seven o'clock. It started at seven o'clock for 25 years, and I have days in December when I arrive here and it's dark, and we get to summer and I arrive here and it's light.
You came in this morning, and the sun was just kind of peeking up over the mountains, and it's beautiful, and there was a star or a planet. I'm not smart enough. I don't know. I don't care. It doesn't matter. I'm looking at it and I'm going, wow. And it'll be the same thing a year from now. Then they tell me, here comes Halley's Comet at a certain time. We look at the creation, and it points us to a creator. And God is saying, look at all this. This is all mine.
The Vastness of God's Domain
Are there life on other planets? I don't know. I kind of hope not from this perspective. It just shows the size of God and His care and love for us. And He holds this all together.
Sandy had a meeting last night, so I went to bed at, let's say 6:45. Stayed up late. And what I do—I know, I'm sick—what I do is I get my phone, I listen to one Christmas song. So I have three or four iHeart channels that are Christmas channels. And I have my favorite. It was Gene Autry singing. And he doesn't say, "here comes Santa Claus." When you hear it next year, it's, "here comes Santy Claus." So I listen to that. It's always right with the world. I go to WOC Radio in Davenport, Iowa. And I listen to whatever the news is there. It's typically the bridges closed. Then I'm a YouTube guy. I like to check YouTubes.
I was in a Chuck Swindoll mood last night. I love to listen to Chuck Swindoll. He was talking about the sovereignty of God. I'm getting ready to teach in Gilbert, I don't know what it is, two or three weeks from now. And my topic is suffering. Well, you can't talk about suffering apart from the sovereignty of God.
God's Complete Control
What Swindoll was saying is what we all know and talk about every week: God is in complete control. That is an amazing thought. I mean, we're having the discussion now, should Apple go in and release and let the government go in and they can track and now they can get into your phone and see whatever you want to see. And I kind of want to go, hey, take a look at it because I can't find anything interesting to look at it. I don't know what you're going to find in here, but try it. That's a scary thought.
Well, God has access to the hearts and minds of seven plus billion people on earth. And that could be a very scary thought. I find it to be a very comforting thought. And He's saying, I have authority here. And I own everything on the earth.
What do we have? Psalm 24 says this: "The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, everything in the world and all who live in it. For if He founded it on the seas and established it on the waters." I remember, I don't know, two or three years ago, I was here in the chapel building worship center for a funeral. And in the lobby was a document by the original founding elders or members of the church. And it was showing the transfer of ownership from something to this—would be a really interesting study, probably couldn't get it through the town of PV today, but a really interesting study.
Tracing True Ownership
So it's like if you did a title search at the title company, it would show this to this to this, go back to 1912 when it became a state, it would show something. Mexico probably has claim on this. And then we took it from them and they gave it back and we went around. And if you could go back, back, back far enough, what we're saying is God says it's mine.
He keeps narrowing it down. He claims ownership of every living thing. "For every animal of the forest is mine," Psalm 50 says. "And the cattle on a thousand hills"—not a thousand cattle. It's designed to show the infinite wealth of God. "I know every bird in the mountains, every creature in the field. If I were hungry, I wouldn't tell you for the world is mine and all that's in it."
Now let's close this down and unpack what we found. Every tangible asset is mine. "The silver is mine. The gold is mine," declares the Lord. So what God is saying is this: everything in this world is His.
The Key Pivot Point
Now here's where it gets sticky. For a junior high camp, we'd say, look up here right now. I reach—and the language even breaks down. So as I use the illustration, I need to be careful. I reach in this back pocket and I pull out this. So for those listening, it is my wallet with a few dollars in it, 25, and some credit cards. And I'm now a Medicare guy and it's my wallet.
Here's what I want to say. I say, "Here's my money." This is the key pivot, got to get this. It's what, 7:22 or 7:23, the key moment. I say, "This is my money" and God says, "No, it's my money."
So we had a birthday party the other day, all eight grandkids there: 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two. And we had two or three moments—not bad, I mean, they weren't bad moments. I don't want to make them out to be bad, but there were two or three moments when we had 15 balloons.
But there was one purple one and it became mine, mine, mine. And I thought, I'll just pop that thing, get rid of it. I'm not the best. And I said, I gotta go to the bathroom. That's my answer to everything, go to the bathroom or eat. I mean, that's how I resolve conflict. But I thought this is a perfect metaphor for me and my relationship with God. I'm going "mine," He's going "mine, mine, mine."
So here you go, you guys have all your papers and you write stuff down, need to write this down, big deal. God transfers possession to us, but not ownership to us. So that's the big point and it clouds things. And you think because you have possession, you have ownership.
The Difference Between Possession and Ownership
So let's illustrate. If I'm an owner, I have a very different relationship with my stuff. If I say to you, here's $25 and I want to give it to you and it's a gift and you take it, it's yours, you can do whatever you want with it. But if I say, here's $25 and I've heard you're pretty good with cash and pretty good in investments, I want to give it to you, but I want you to see what you can get for it in terms of return for me, you're now a manager, not an owner.
If I transfer it to you and you're an owner, that's really the end of my relationship with this stuff. If I transfer possession, but not ownership to you, we now have a fiduciary relationship. You're an obligation to me. And that changes your entire relationship with your stuff.
More Than Just Money
So we want to think money. And my fear is if you think that, you miss the radical scope on your life. God's saying, it's true of your time, your energy, your effort, your money. I mean, for many of you, the money thing's kind of decided, but what about the time?
And here's my personal experience: as I get older and I have a little more freedom and I have a little more time, I need to feel the burden, and I do, the burden to steward my time as well as I steward my money. When I hear stewardship, I grab my wallet. And He's saying, no, you ought to grab your heart because it's everything.
There was an incredible reaction to this lesson yesterday. Had a beautiful email, but there was a lady that was there and she just retired last year. And she was sitting up front and I noticed she was crying. And I thought, gosh, this can't be that bad. I mean, I've been to bad lessons. This is not the worst I've ever heard. And it really distracted me. I mean, she was crying. I thought, well, maybe it's allergies. And she came up afterwards and she said, this was just like a stake in my heart because I've retired and I'm really struggling with the area of time and you've elevated the urgency of that to a brand new level for me. And I thought, well, that's really good. God's doing something.
A Recalibration of Perspective
So this is a recalibration. When we get to giving, we'll ask the giving question from two different perspectives and it gives you two different answers. If I say, how much should I give? I'll get one answer. If I say, how much of God's money should I keep, I get a very different answer. Those are two very different questions. So it's my relationship with my resources, time, energy, effort, money.
The Parable of the Talents
If you have Bibles, why don't you open them to Matthew chapter 25, and it's Jesus telling a parable. Parables are sticky wickets. You have to be very careful with them. They're easily abused. It's kind of like going into the Old Testament, pulling out promises that were made either to certain individuals or to the nation of Israel, and say that they're for you today. In a parable, there's generally one big principle that God's communicating. Now, I may be able to pull other things out of it, but this one, it seems to me, we can at least get the gist of it pretty quickly, and you'll see it beginning in verse 14.
"It'll be like a man going on a journey who has his servants and entrusts them, calls his servants together, and entrusts his property to them. To one, he gives five talents of money"—so a talent here is not an ability, it's a increment, so five bucks—"to another two, to another one, each according to their ability. He went away on a journey. The man who had five went to work at once and put his money to work and gained five more, so also the one who had two gained two more, but the one who had received one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground, and hid his master's money."
"After a long time, the master of the servants returned, subtle accounts with him. The man who'd received five talents brought the other five. The master said"—or he said to the master—"you've entrusted me with five talents, see if I've gained five more. The master said, well done, good and faithful servant, you've been faithful with a few things, I'll put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness. The man with two talents also came, said, master, you entrusted me with two, see I have gained two more, and his master said, well done, good and faithful servant, you've been faithful in a few things, I'll put you in charge of many."
You can get a principal out of that pretty quickly. "The man who received one talent said, master, I know you're a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. I was afraid and went and hid your treasure and see, here's what belongs to you." And the master said, "you wicked lazy servant, so you know that I harvest where I haven't sown and gathered where I haven't scattered seed." We get all tied up in this, but you'll see the principle. "Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with a banker so that"—and this doesn't work so well anymore—"so I would return back with interest, take the talent from him," etc.
We Are Trustees, Not Owners
So here's the last part of your outline. Because God is an owner, we are responsible to Him as trustees. Sandy and I, when we got married—so it was just about four years ago now—we met to do financial planning and estate planning. So two different things. The financial planning, we sat down and we said, here's my stuff, here's my retirement, my goal is
probably like yours, not so much a return on capital as return of capital. I'm at a different point now. I'm old, I'm going to die, I don't want to outlive my resources.
Well, about a year ago, it occurred to me that we have a bad premise. When Sandy and I got married, I became her partner and her protector, and one of my biggest desires and privileges is to protect her. She moved out of the workforce at her prime earning time. I sat down with our guy and I said, I think we have a faulty premise in our investing. We're trying to get me through. I'm 65, she's 50, my resting heart rate's 190, hers is 12. She's going to live another 40 or 50 years, and we're coordinating my death, which could come anytime, into hers.
So the guy started probing. What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to do? What's your risk tolerance? Well, here's what we're saying to you. God is coming to you and saying, I'm going to transfer possession of these resources to you. Time, energy, effort, money. You need to figure out from God, what do you want to accomplish? What are your investment strategies? Not mine, but yours.
The Challenge of Individual Application
I don't mean to make this corny, and here's the problem with this: I can't give you any specifics in terms of answers. So you're going to arrive at different answers and you're immediately going to begin to judge each other. Let me take all the pressure off you. God is not going to judge you by how I handle my life. He's going to judge you by how you handle yours.
So it's legitimate questions, and I get it. What kind of car would Jesus drive? What kind of house would Jesus live in? How much would Jesus pay for season tickets? If it's Iowa football, He'd pay a lot, I think.
I'm at home the other day. I haven't played 12 holes of golf in three or four years. You're sick of hearing this. I want to play golf so bad. I took my driver out yesterday and I just can't swing it, but I'm watching an ad, and it's one of the blim-blam, pull the shaft out, recalibrate. I've always been a big equipment guy. I don't know if you can buy a game, but I think you can rent one. I'm a big equipment guy, and I said to Sandy, I need to get one of those. She said, Tom, you can't swing. I know, but if I ever swing, I ought to have one of those. So I know this, what kind of driver would Jesus hit? What would Jesus wear?
Every one of these becomes not a financial discussion, but a spiritual discussion. Not designed to make you feel guilty, but designed to help you be thoughtful.
God Determines Our Level of Responsibility
The second thing, He determines the dimension of our responsibility. He gave to each one according to their abilities. We are all equal, but we're not equal in ability. Some of you, haven't you heard that? He just has the Midas touch. I don't know what that means, other than he makes money. She just has it.
All you got to do is watch something like some talent show, America's Got Talent, or American Idol, and you see this guy get up, and he makes it look so easy, but you know you can't do it. We were at one of the boys' football games, and we have a friend who played football at ASU, and he was a defensive back. One of the balls, when the kids were playing catch, came over, and I thought, well, all he's going to do is pick it up and take it back. I'm telling you, it was beautiful. He scooped down, I mean, it's so different. The difference between a D1 athlete, and a NAIA, and me, is like a world. He scooped this down, he picked it up, he made a flow, he threw this, it was so smooth. He and I aren't equal.
So I've got to be very careful, because we get into that whole envy thing. Listen, God gave you ability, and He gave you resources to steward, and He's determined how many you have. All you got to do is look around the room. Some are very attractive. Not everybody, though. Some are very smart. Some end up with a U. Some of you have a lot of dough. Some of you are wearing your net worth. I mean, that's just the way it is. It's kind of like the old army slogan, be all you can be, with what God's given you.
The Coming Day of Accounting
The third thing in your outline: He will someday require an accounting. I watched part one the other night of the miniseries on Bernie Madoff. It was really interesting. I mean, it was really well done, I thought. When I'm watching this, I'm saying, how does it? Well, it just keeps going. As long as there's no accounting, we're going to be okay. But someday, there's a day of accounting.
As Christians, here's what we know: that our future in heaven is secure. I know that when I die, I know I'm going to heaven, not based on anything that I've done, or anything that I've said, or who I am, or what I am, but based on the promises of God, that I've trusted Christ as my Lord and Savior. But the Bible also tells me that there is a judgment, not for punishment, but for reward, for how I've stewarded the assets that God's given me. I think that, in one way, becomes a motivation. It becomes a reality.
I think a lot of people have this idea that God's got a screen like Jerry Jones has, the size of Dallas Stadium, and He's going to replay all my sin, which would be, I don't want to watch it. Somebody came up to me the other day and started telling me some story about something I did to them, which usually has a bad ending, but this had a good ending, and it was life change. I didn't even know. There's got to be a bunch of those for you, for us.
There's that accounting. There's that judgment. And who will advance those, who wisely advances interest, is not going—
to have any place for those who know the responsibility and don't do it. So you might have been able to say at 7 o'clock this morning, this is all new to me. I didn't know it. But now it's 7:39, and you do. So the reaction is not to go, oh, I screwed up. I've messed up. I've made bad decisions. That's everybody. The question is, how do I deal with it from here?
Now you do understand. And you do understand that there's a judgment. And human nature is going to be to approach it like the NBA. You're going to want to wait and say, I'm going to get serious about this when I hear God say, two minutes, two minutes. Well, I don't get that warning.
The Reality of Limited Time
It's just part of procedure, so no reason to be alarmed. I was at the cardiologist yesterday. I don't know which doctor. It's a particularly sad waiting room. But these waiting rooms are filled with these old people. And I don't mean this harshly, but they're all sitting around. And I'm thinking, what am I doing here? Is that me?
And the reality is, it is. And I keep saying, God, I'm going to get to that. And God says to me every day, I don't know when you're going to get to that. You're putting out on 17. You're hitting on the 18th green. You don't have forever to do this.
Think Small, Start Where You Are
I'll give you one final thought, and then I'll give you the since God's owner. It is, think small. My fear is that we think too big on too many things. I can't do everything, so I won't do anything.
One of the things that happened to me about two years ago is I became convinced that high school coaches really are at key places. And youth coaches as well are at key places in kids' lives. And the more time I've spent around them, which is not a lot, but some, I realize if I'm going to have influence, I think I can have a bigger influence at Tucson Unified School District than I can at my Sunday school class.
When I hear stats and I see kids, I've got a game. The Liberty High team that I've been tracking got into the state tournament, last team in, and playing at Chandler. It couldn't have been better, because it's right by my house. And I'm going down there tonight, and I don't know who's going to win. It doesn't matter, I say. It obviously matters to them. But this game tonight, not the outcome, but the process can affect these kids' lives forever.
God Focuses on Process, Not Just Results
So here's one more thing to file away that's counterintuitive to human nature. God doesn't focus on the end result. He focuses on the process. I have a tendency to be obsessed about the end result.
So last night, as I mentioned, Sandy's gone, and I'm watching something political that I know I shouldn't. And I flip over and say, I know the Hawks play, because they're number four in the country, but they're not going to end up, the basketball team won't end up ranked as high as the football team. Trust me on this. And I said, I think they play again. And I flip it over, and there they are, down six with a minute to play. I'm saying, why do I put myself through this? Why don't I just watch Iowa wrestling and not have to worry?
But you know, my brother, so I text my brother, and I say, your Hawkeyes suck. And so he texts back and said, oh, I forgot about the game. Are they winning? And I said, does that sound like a winning text to you? But see, he didn't want to know how. He wanted to know the end result.
That's how I am. When I come in here, this is the only day in the week that I'm around guys that have a newspaper. So while typically, I didn't do it today, I grab the sports and check the standings. That's typically human. God doesn't care about the standings. He cares about the process.
God's not calling you to win people to Christ. He's calling you to proclaim the gospel. It's vastly different. So you don't have to think in some big thing. It'll get big based on your faithfulness in the little thing. I say the same thing in my life.
The Transformational Principle
So here's the transformational principle: you are not the owner of your time, energy, effort, money. You're a steward. And that changes everything. It's not your day, or your time, or your cash, or your talents. It's God's.
So when Rush says, talent on loan from God, I don't think he understands the theological... I don't know. I don't know, Rush. I don't know if he understands the theological truth of it, but he's nailed it cold. It's your talent on loan from God to be stewarded for your good and His glory.
Got to lay that down, and everything comes against it. We'll pick up right there next week.
Father, thank You for that truth. It's an amazing truth, life-changing truth. Help us see it. And then, way more than that, help us live in a way that's driven by that principle. God, thank You for the men and women who take Your word and You seriously. Thank You we can be here today, and I pray that this is a good stewardship use of the time You've given us. Pray that in Christ's name, amen. Have a great week. I'll see you next week.