The Lord Jesus said that we could not be trusted with the true riches of the kingdom until we learned to handle earthly riches. It has been estimated that from one-third to one-half of the biblical teachings on righteousness have to do with stewardship. Obviously, managing well what has been entrusted to us is what the Lord considers fundamental to righteousness. Not doing this is why one was called “wicked, lazy slave” in the Parable of the Talents (see Matthew 25:26). Doing this well got the other commended with “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things: I will put you in charge of many things” (Matthew 25:21 NIV). Stewardship is vital for us to learn if we are to be trusted with much.
It would be wonderful to be trusted with the resources to buy five thousand poor a meal every day. It would be better to have the authority to multiply one hamburger into enough to feed five thousand every day, which is the kingdom authority that the Lord demonstrated when He fed the five thousand from one little boy’s lunch. That is the difference between earthly wealth and kingdom wealth. However, we must manage the earthly wealth right to be trusted with kingdom authority.
We are living in a time when most of the power and most of the problems are economic. Many of the teachings in churches today seem to revolve around economic issues. This is not necessarily wrong, but a reflection of the times in which we live and the need to address the pressing issues of most people. Even so, we could use a drastic change of perspective about where the real power is, where the real wealth is, and what is really important.
Let’s start with the natural first. Because of the Hubble telescope and other brilliant inventions, we now know that the physical universe is many times bigger than we perceived just a few years ago. As big and impressive as it is, the entire physical universe is but a shadow of the spiritual realm and has about as much substance compared to it as your shadow does to you. Our God is big! When the greatest miracles were done on the earth such as Moses parting the Red Sea, the angels were yawning. They have seen much greater things than anything ever done on the earth—they saw the heavens stretched out like a tent curtain as we are told in Psalms.
Compared to the physical universe, the earth is hardly a speck of dust. Compared to the spiritual universe, it could not even register as a speck of dust. However, it has infinite importance and value because the Son of God came to the earth and gave His own life for our redemption. Then we are told that God will come to the earth to dwell among men! This is a profound statement that size may not have anything to do with value. This is why angels would rather have an assignment to the earth than over galaxies. It is on the earth that the Lord is calling those who will be His own sons and daughters. This is the highest calling in the universe, physical or spiritual.
I often hear people saying that only one-third of the angels fell so the good still outnumber the bad two to one. That is very far from the case. Angels are only one spiritual species, and there are millions more. We have been given a glimpse of this in Scripture with the cherubs, cherubim, “Ezekiel’s wheels,” and others. Only one-third of one type of spiritual being fell, and none of the rest did. Angels are the messengers, and they are outnumbered many, many times over by all of God’s other spiritual beings.
As the devil and the angels that rebelled have been cast down to the earth, all of the evil in the universe is now confined to earth. As C.S. Lewis once wrote, heaven is so big that if all of the evil in existence were fashioned into a ball and hurled at a single little bird in heaven, it would not even have enough power to register as a thought to that bird. The point is that on earth we are so evil-centric and sin-centric because it is dominant here now, but the more we enter into the kingdom, the smaller it will become to us. With the tiniest move of God’s little finger, all evil could be eradicated for all time, and ultimately this will be done. The kingdom is certainly coming to the earth.
From a political, economic, social, and religious perspective, it may look like evil is prevailing at this time. Evil will have one final rage upon the earth, but this is hardly even a speck on the radar screen of all that God is doing. All of the evil in the world is the result of mankind thinking we could run this world without God, and at the end, we will learn for all time what a bad idea that was. Every human problem is getting beyond human remedy, but there is an answer to every one of them—return to God.
As we see in Isaiah 60:1-5, when darkness is covering the earth and deep darkness the people, the Lord’s glory will appear on His people, and the nations will come to the light. The light is going to win, and it is not even a fair fight. All of the evil in the universe will ultimately be blown out like a match in a hurricane. As much as it may look like for a time that evil is winning, it does not have a chance.
The U.S. debt is scheduled to surpass $16 trillion soon. The blessing of a nation that fears the Lord is that it will lend to many nations and not borrow. We were the greatest creditor nation in history when we feared the Lord. When the U.S. started turning from the Lord, we started coming under the curse that is promised to come upon nations that turn from Him—slavery, as the debtor is the creditor’s slave. Now the U.S. is the biggest debtor nation in history, and we are sinking faster each day.
To those who understand economics, our $16 trillion dollar debt is a deceitful number. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) decided to do a study on what is the real U.S. debt, which included our future obligations such as entitlements. The IMF determined that our real debt was over $200 trillion dollars. They concluded that all Americans could be taxed at the 100% rate forever, and it would not even come close to meeting these obligations. This is beyond human remedy, like many of our other problems now, but it is not beyond God’s remedy.
The whole world is upside down economically, and the consequences of this are both growing and hitting us more each year. There is no human way out, but the resources of the kingdom are so great that if all world debt were paid off at once, no one in the kingdom would even realize anything was missing. All world debt would not even register as a penny in the kingdom bank. The Lord is actually going to do this. There are just a couple of things that have to be done first. We will discuss these next week.
