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Read for This Week’s Study: Isa. 22:14-18; 1 Cor. 4:1, 2; Col. 2:2, 3; Eph. 6:13-17; 2 Cor. 5:10.

Memory Text: “On the contrary, we speak as those approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please people but God, who tests our hearts” (1 Thess. 2:4, NIV).

Adam and Eve’s first job involved stewardship. The garden and all creation were given to them to care for, to enjoy, and to have dominion over (Gen. 2:15), even though they owned none of it. Instead, they were stewards of what the Lord had entrusted to them.

This week we will look more closely at the definition of a steward but after the Fall, after our first parents were driven from Eden. That is, we also are stewards, but we are stewards in an environment quite different from the one Adam and Eve first enjoyed.

What is stewardship? Certain Bible characters reveal what a steward is by how they lived. Other scriptures define it more clearly. When we become God’s stewards, our focus on the world and its materialistic values changes to a focus on the Creator and His mission. As with Adam and Eve, God entrusts to us responsibilities of divine origin. Since the Fall in Eden, however, the task of stewardship has changed, because, along with the responsibilities of caring for the material world, we are also entrusted to be good stewards of spiritual truths.