Stewarding Our Skills To The Glory Of God

Dec 4, 2024 • John Cole

In this series of teaching on stewardship, John Cole revised and taught from a published course made available without copyright by local church pastors shared for churches like ours. Read the handout notes here...

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INTRODUCTION

1 Peter 4:10–11 10 As every man hath received the [a/each] gift, even so minister [serve] the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold [varied] grace of God. 11 If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles [very sayings] of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability [strength] which God giveth [supplies]: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise [the glory] and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

SKILLS COME FROM GOD.

1. God delights in your skill.

Proverbs 22:29 Seest thou a man diligent [skilled and experienced] in his business? He shall stand before kings; He shall not stand before mean [obscure/unknown] men.

Psalm 33:3 Sing unto him a new song; Play skilfully with a loud noise.

2. God deserves the credit for your success.

Deuteronomy 8:17–18 And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.

3. Your lack of skill is also from God.

YOUR SKILLS EXIST TO GLORIFY GOD.

1. Your skill is God’s means of provision .

2. Your skill shows off God’s skill .

3. Your skill reveals God’s wisdom in creation .

So not only is your skill from God (point 1) – it’s for God (point 2). Your capabilities and your capacity aren’t about showing off your worth but about showing off and sharing in God’s. You are all about Him .

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INTRODUCTION

When I was a kid, we would say, “Skills!” when you or someone else did something well… or “cool.”

Skills are highly praised in our society, highly sought after, and grossly misunderstood. Like most things, they are viewed very one-dimensionally. We esteem or even idolize people for their skills. What does God think about that?

I can tell you… He sees us as stewards of our skills, not owners or originators of them.

Skills falls within this published series on stewardship that we have been going through.

We started with stewardship by looking at it in general and then by getting specific about the stewardship of money, viewed through Jesus’ parable of the talents in Matthew 25.

The point is not your money—as if God needs your money.

The point is what your handling of money says about the glory and goodness of the Master, of God. Does that stewardship evidence risk-taking obedience? That is, does it evidence faith?

Then we took that same principle and applied it to different gifts God’s given us other than money. Citizenship, health, rest, time—and today, skill.

What does God think of your skills—your capabilities, your capacity? His skills are a lot better than yours. So does he value what you can do? And if so, why?

In a moment, I’ll answer that question. But first, I’d like to get off on the right foot by thinking through what’s distinctly Christian about this conversation. How should a Christian think differently about their skills than someone who doesn’t follow Jesus?

›[Wait for answers]

And what are the stakes in getting this right?

First, joy. Unless we understand how skill fits into stewardship, we won’t understand joy as God designed us for.

Conversely, A lot of frustration we experience in this life about the limitations of our skills and capacity probably comes from misunderstanding what stewardship really means.

And second, treasure. What we do in this life matters for the next—and much of that comes down to how we steward our skills.

To get started, I want frame everything we talk about today with one passage: 1 Peter 4:10-11. You’ll see it there in your handout.

Let’s first begin by reading the verses leading up to these in chapter 4.

Notice especially the contrast between doing the “will of God” and the “will of the Gentiles/sin” in vs 1-3.

Also, you will see in vs 4-7 the instruction to “watch and pray” in order to do the will of God, knowing that we will all give account to the Lord on the day of resurrection.

Finally, you will see the instruction to love one another that immediately proceeds our text for tonight.

1 Peter 4:1–9

1 Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin;

2 That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.

3 For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries:

4 Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you:

5 Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.

6 For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.

7 But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer.

8 And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.

9 Use hospitality one to another without grudging.

Now to our text.

1 Peter 4:10–11

10 As every man hath received the [a/each] gift, even so minister [serve] the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold [varied] grace of God. 11 If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles [very sayings] of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability [strength] which God giveth [supplies]: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise [the glory] and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

Notice:

•the source of skills: God

•the point of skills: glorify God (creations that share and make God known)

•the type of skills: speaking and serving (this can be very clarifying)

•the responsibility of skills: vs 5 “who shall give account”

Four observations from that passage that will form the outline of our class.

•First, your skills come from God. No surprise if you’ve been with us throughout this published series—but that idea shows up again in this verse.

•Second, he gave you those skills to show off his glory—verse 11.

•Third, your skills are a stewardship—given by God for God.

•And fourth, skills are for service to others.

SKILLS COME FROM GOD.

As each has received a gift. From whom? God, of course. Another way of stating a verse that’s come up repeatedly: 1 Corinthians 4:7 “For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?”

But wait just a second, you say. That may be true for some things—like innate intelligence. But other skills are things I worked really hard at.

My jump shot…that’s thousands of hours of practice.

I went to school to learn how to weld.

My writing skills were years in the making.

Planning or project management calls for certifications and/or schooling and lots of experience.

Doctors often go to school for a good nine years, give or take.

What do you mean these skills came from God?

Well, who gave you the opportunity to get that education? Who gave you the ability, and the time, to practice that jump shot? Where did you get the desire to perform in the first place? God, God, God, God. Let me walk you through three important implications of this:

1. God delights in your skill.

Think of Proverbs 22:29 that we quoted a few weeks ago. “Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.”

Proverbs 22:29

Seest thou a man diligent [skilled and experienced] in his business? He shall stand before kings; He shall not stand before mean [obscure/unknown] men.

You feel the delight, the pride of the author in that verse.

Or in Exodus, God gives wise skill to his people so that his tabernacle might be crafted with skill.

Or Psalm 33:3,

Psalm 33:3

Sing unto him a new song; Play skilfully with a loud noise.

God loves skill!

And there is no one more skillful than God.

Therefore, skillfulness is in truth a reflection of God that can bring Him glory if stewarded rightly and for the right purposes.

2. God deserves the credit for your success.

Think back to God’s warning to the Israelites in Deuteronomy as they got ready to enter the Promised Land:

Beware lest you say in your heart,

Deuteronomy 8:17–18

And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.

Not my power, but God who gives me power.

There’s a joy that comes from skills well-used that’s good, right, and God-honoring.

But how often do we boast about things we have no right to boast about? We love to personally boast about things we received from God!

That’s a really hard lesson to learn!

3. Your lack of skill is also from God.

If he’s the one who gave, he’s also the one who decided not to give you what you lack. That’s true of your capabilities; that’s also true of your capacities.

What you can do and how much you can do it are limits fixed by God, and those limits are good! Now, you have a responsibility and a joy before God to strategically work to expand both of those. Both your capability and your capacity—that’s how he’s designed you.

And we should not confuse rest in God’s sovereignty with the lazy rest of the sluggard. But those caveats not withstanding, your limits are from God just as much as your skills.

Now, what if you really believed that all skill comes from God? Let me turn that into a question for you. What difference did that make in your life this last week? Or what difference do you wish it had made? Think about it for a moment: implications for you personally of this truth.

There’s a chart in your handout. I want to ask that you thoughtfully fill that out this week so that we can have some meaningful discussion about it next Wednesday when we pick on on part two with the second of the four points.

Think of three skills that God’s entrusted you with. You’ll see a hypothetical example there: ability to write clearly. Then, for each of them, write down how you’ve seen God bring glory to himself through each of those three. Or how He could. Also write down how each skill can serve others. And lastly, what good stewardship of each skill will look like over the next several years—which could include laying one or more of them aside.

YOUR SKILLS EXIST TO GLORIFY GOD.

So, back to our outline. If God gave you your skills, why did he give them to you? Well, as we saw in 1 Peter 4, to glorify himself. Peter gives us two example of skills.

1 Peter 4:10–11

10 As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. 11 If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

1.We speak using God’s words.

2.We serve using God’s strength.

So that “in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.”

Now, in a Christian church, that’s a term we throw around a lot. “To the glory of God.” What does that actually mean?

It means that God gave you the gifts he did—skills included—in order to show off how amazing he is.

Remember that from the parable of the talents? The fate of the third servant showed that what mattered wasn’t so much the money the first servants made but what their faithfulness showed about the Master.

They bet everything that he would be true to his word, and so their actions proclaimed that he was trustworthy and generous.

What matters is not so much what you do as much as what doing it shows about the worth of our God. Here in 1 Peter 4, our words show off the wisdom of his words. Our strength shows off the power of his strength.

As you use your skills as God intended, it should call attention not to you but to God!

It can be easy to feel like my time is my own. Even easier to feel like my body are my own, that my money is my own—I earned it after all, didn’t I? But maybe easiest of all is to think that my skills and capabilities are my own.

They’re so intrinsic to my identity after all—and I worked hard for some of them. But far from being about displaying my worth, the skill God’s given me is for the purpose of displaying his worth.

The skill God’s given you is for displaying his worth.

How’s that happen?

›[Take 2-3 ideas]

Let me give you three ways that our skills can show off the glory of God.

1. Your skill is God’s means of provision .

As Martin Luther put it, we pray for our daily bread at night and in the morning the baker rises to bake it.

When a doctor heals someone, would it be wrong to thank God instead of my wife? Of course not! That healing is from God; the doctor’s skill was merely the means he used.

The more skilled you are at your work, the more God uses you as his agent in his common grace ministry of provision for this world.

2. Your skill shows off God’s skill .

How? Because he made it! He’s the one who gave it to you and so he takes delight as you use it.

Imagine teaching a kid how to throw a perfect spiral. And as they figure it out and delight in doing it right, you take delight too. Not only because you taught them that skill but because when he discovers how fun it is to get it right, he’s now sharing in what you love.

But of course when God delights in seeing us use the skill he’s given us, it’s not just “look how amazing that it” but “look how much they enjoy what I share” – the one who is the source of that skill.

Which leads us to a third way your skill can show off the glory of God:

3. Your skill reveals God’s wisdom in creation .

In a sense, skilled work is nothing more than a rediscovery of God’s good creation.

Imagine the skilled scientist making a discovery and God sitting back with a smile on his face, “Yes! I knew you would figure that one out. Isn’t it amazing?”

Or the artist discovering the beauty of arranging things just so. “So glad someone finally saw that…isn’t it amazing?”

Our skills can be put to use to discover innovation or efficiency or beauty or delight or healing or any number of things. And in all this, we’re simply walking God’s footsteps after him.

Delighting in a more beautiful way to assemble the pieces of this world he’s made.

Discovering something he had in mind from day one.

And so it shows off his wisdom and his goodness.

EX: Jamie Payne helps people see the smaller elements of God’s creation by maintaining microscopes for organizations in our region.

CONCLUSION

1 Peter 4:10–11