The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s Stewardship Ministry helps congregations grow in their understanding and implementation of a life of stewardship.

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Christian stewardship is the free and joyous activity of God’s family — the church — in managing life’s resources for His purposes.

 

Newsletter Article – December 2023

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The Measure of Our Generosity

 

If you open up the Small Catechism, you’ll find a shortened version of the Third Commandment: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” But if you look up the list of the Ten Commandments in Exodus, you’ll find the full version:

 

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Ex. 20:8–11)

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Why did Luther shorten this commandment for the Small Catechism? Was it so that the kids wouldn’t have so much to memorize? No, it was because Luther knew that all the details of the Third Commandment were part of the “shadow” of the Old Testament (Col. 2:16). Or as St. Paul puts it, there is “letter” in the Old Testament law and “spirit” (2 Cor. 3:6). The details of not working on Saturday were fulfilled by Christ. That part of the Sabbath regulation no longer applies. But the spirit of the law does remain: We need to dedicate sufficient time each week to hearing God’s Word and giving it honor and respect. Or as Luther sums it up in the Small Catechism’s explanation to the Third Commandment: “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.”

 

The same sort of analysis applies to our giving. In the Old Testament, God commanded the Israelites to give a tenth of their income to the Levites so that those men could dedicate their lives to serving in God’s house, teaching the people, conducting worship, etc. In the New Testament, there is a rigid requirement listed about handing in your tax forms to church to make sure you’ve given enough. But the mandate to have a full-time ministry, which is the spirit of that law concerning tithing to the Levites, is right there in 1 Corinthians 9:14: “The Lord has ordained that those who preach the Gospel should make their living from the Gospel.”

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The New Testament church’s job is significantly larger than the job of Old Testament Israel. We are commanded to preach the Gospel to all nations. There was only the temple to maintain in the Old Testament, but we have churches, schools, universities and seminaries, plus missionaries everywhere. So you tell me: Can we really undertake the work of the ministry if our giving doesn’t even measure up to Old Testament levels of generosity?