Let me share two delightful stories. The first is about a lady who checked into an airport to catch a flight. Feeling hungry, she bought a bag of cookies and proceeded to the departure lounge. There she sat down and took a book out to read. An elderly gentleman came and sat next to her. She heard a rustling sound, and saw the man take a cookie and put it in his mouth.
"How dare he!" she thought. But not wanting to create a scene, she ignored him. Then she heard the rustling sound again, and saw the man take another cookie and put it in his mouth. She stared at him. He smiled at her, and said, "Would you like to have one?" He offered her the bag and she took a cookie.
"I'd better eat them before he finishes them all," she thought. So she did, taking one cookie after another until the bag was empty. Just then, her flight was called. She got up in a huff, and made her way to the gate. As she joined the line to board the plane, she reached into her handbag for her boarding pass. To her surprise and embarrassment, she saw her bag of cookies, unopened and safely tucked away in her handbag!27
The moral of the story: Sometimes we think that something belongs to us, only to find that it actually belongs to someone else.
Now another story: A man bought over an old house that was in a bad state of disrepair. He spent days and weeks putting everything back in order. In particular, he worked on the backyard, pulling out the overgrown weeds, tilling the ground and planting beautiful flowers. Before long, he had one of the loveliest gardens in the neighbourhood.
One day the pastor of the local church came visiting to welcome him to the neighbourhood. The pastor saw the garden of beautiful flowers, and being a religious man, remembered the words of Jesus that "even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these flowers." When the man proudly showed the pastor what he had done with his backyard, the pastor exclaimed, "I see that you and the Lord have put together a most beautiful garden." To which the man replied, "Yes, but you should have seen it when the Lord had it all to himself."
The moral of the story: The flowers may belong to the Lord, but the garden has to be the work of the man.
Both stories highlight the issue of ownership. Who owns what? The lady at the airport thought she owned the bag of cookies when it actually belonged to the man. The visiting pastor thought the garden belonged to the Lord, but the man rightly pointed out that what the Lord owned was a patch of overgrown weeds. The man changed it into the garden of flowers.
So, what belongs to us? What belongs to God? Does the bag of cookies belong to me? Does it belong to someone else? Does the garden belong to the Lord? Or does it belong to me? Let's keep these questions in mind as we look at the story of Moses, and the whole issue of ownership and stewardship. We begin with the call of God to Moses which came to him rather unexpectedly.
The Lord said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.... And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt." But Moses said to God, "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?"
Out of the blue, God called on Moses to go on a mission. Moses replied, Who am I? He was full of doubt, hesitation, excuses. God was calling him to a great task, but Moses was not sure if he was the one. He was certain he could not speak to the people. He was uncertain if they would listen to him.
How was God to deal with him?
God dealt with Moses by addressing the issue of ownership: "What is that in your hand?"29 All Moses had was a staff—the stick or crook that a shepherd carried as a trademark of his vocation. God said, "Throw it on the ground." Moses did as he was told and the staff turned into a snake as it fell to the ground. It was not something which Moses could do. It was a miracle, a demonstration of God's power.
Whose staff was it? It was Moses', of course. He was holding it. He had held it perhaps for years. He owned it; it was his. But what about the snake? Whose snake was it when the staff turned into a snake? Obviously, it belonged to God. Moses could not turn the staff into a snake—only God could do it.
In other words, the staff belonged to Moses and the miracle belonged to God. God then told Moses to take hold of the snake; when he did so, it became a staff again. The same staff that belonged to Moses. That ended the first of the object lessons. Now to the second, still on the same theme:
Then the Lord said, "Put your hand inside your cloak." So Moses put his hand into his cloak, and when he took it out, it was leprous, like snow. "Now put it back into your cloak," he said. So Moses put his hand back into his cloak, and when he took it out, it was restored, like the rest of his flesh.
God told Moses to put his hand into his cloak. Whose hand was it? It was Moses' hand, of course. When he took it out, it was stricken with leprosy, white as snow. Whose hand was it now? It was still Moses' hand, but something had happened to it. The hand had turned leprous.
God told Moses to put the hand back into the cloak again and then to take it out once more. It emerged clean of leprosy, restored and healthy like the rest of his body. Again, whose hand was it? Moses or the Lord's? It was Moses' hand, but God could do what he pleases with it. In that sense, God had ownership of it. After all, God made it in the first place. It was as much God's hand as it was Moses' hand.
God was giving Moses two simple lessons on ownership. Who owned the staff? Who owned the hand? On the one hand, they belonged to Moses. On the other hand, when we think about it, the staff and the hand really belonged to God.
God is teaching Moses, and us, about stewardship—what we do with what God has given us. Stewardship is essentially about ownership: what we own and what we do not own. What is ours, and what is not ours. What belongs to us, and what belongs to God.
The Bible makes it clear from the beginning that God is the owner of all things. Before anything ever existed, God was there. Before one of us came into being, God was there. Everything belonged to him. He created everything. We were not around when he made the universe and everything in it. We made nothing and owned nothing. In fact, we were the last to be created. When we came on the scene, everything was already made for us.
It was true of the first man and woman, Adam and Eve. It is true of every one of us born into this world. When we were born, we came in with nothing. When we leave the world, we go out with nothing. We take no part in our own conception and birth, and have no control over the time of our death. God is the Creator, the Owner. Everything belongs to Him. That is an important truth: Everything we have belongs to God; we own none of it.
---------------------------------To be continued...
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