Clarence Sexton Quotes

God begins the subject of stewardship in the very first chapter of the Bible. Typically, when the word “stewardship” is mentioned, most people think of money. Of course, stewardship involves much more than money. Money is only one expression of our stewardship. It involves all our response to God in life.

Remember, our stewardship encompasses all of life. There is nothing you or I could imagine that stewardship does not include.

Christ did not redeem us by His precious blood and say, “For the rest of your days, until you take your last breath, you are on your own.” On the contrary, He said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5). We are never alone. For anyone of God’s children to say, “I cannot do this thing God desires of me!” is to bring an indictment against God. It is saying, “God is not able to do this. God is not able to make me able.” But the Bible teaches that God is “able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20).

For example, what is God’s design with men, women, and marriage? What is God’s design with children? Did you know that being the right kind of husband or wife and understanding the institution of marriage is a part of our stewardship? Do you understand that when God gives us children that is a major part of our stewardship? A fellow who says, “I really do not have time to be a father to my children,” is a man who is sinning against the stewardship God has given him. A mother may say, “I am engaged in everything imaginable, and these kids are driving me crazy!” That mother is sinning against the stewardship of life God has given her. God has placed us over His possessions as stewards.

The Christian life is not a life that is a little better; it is completely different.

As we speak of prayer, we are speaking about communication with God. In that sense, our prayer life is our Christian life. God created man not only so that we could communicate with Him, but also so that we could labor together with God.

God desires to visit with us, to guide us, to show us His way, to give us His understanding, and to let us know what He is up to in this world.

A London newspaper put the following question in the newspaper for a number of weeks: “What is the definition of money?” They offered a very handsome prize of money to the person who submitted the best definition of money. I was so taken by what I read that I wrote it down in the margin of my Bible. Here is the winning answer: “Money is an article which may be used as a universal passport everywhere except heaven and a universal provider for everything except happiness.” In other words, money can get you anywhere except heaven and buy you everything except happiness.

Many have the idea that once someone has made a profession of faith, that is all it is—a profession of faith. But God says we come to know Him so we can obey Him and do what He has given us to do. Our response to God determines how God responds to us—with the same measure.

In the book of Ephesians the Lord tells us that we should forgive “even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven” us (Ephesians 4:32). None of us is ever forgiven on the basis of we have done. We do not deserve the forgiveness. God forgives us not because we deserve it, but because Christ deserves it. He paid our sin debt.

Another one of these ground rules is found in I Timothy 5:8, which says, “But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” I say to young boys and girls, “Do you realize that someday you are going to face the heavy responsibility of providing for your own family?” You ask, “Where did you get that?” We get that from God.

If I said to you that I cannot live the Christian life because I have a wife and children, then if God gave me the wife and the children and God made me a man, then I am actually saying to you the Lord is to blame for all of this. However, God is not to blame for any wrong thing.We have God-given responsibilities. These God-assigned responsibilities never conflict.

In other words, God says if we are faithful in the temporal things, using them wisely for God’s use and God’s glory, then at the same time we are being faithful in that which is least, we are faithful also in that which is much. Time (the “least”) and eternity (the “much”) are connected in the present tense.

We sing the little chorus, “Christ Is All I Need.” Dr. Vance Havner said, “You may say Christ is all you need, but He is not really all you need until you come to the place where He is all you have. When He is really all you have, then you recognize He is really all you need.

One of our missionaries called recently and said to me, “It is amazing how you learn how little you really need.” I wanted to say to him that I had not learned that yet. How many of you have not learned that yet? I am not sure he has learned it, but at least he said it. If we discover true riches, it will affect the way we live.

One of the great things that must be disturbed in our lives and in our churches if we are ever going to know God’s full blessing, is that we must consider the failure of not doing what is right to be as harmful and sinful as going out and doing wrong. So much of our Christian neglect is excused, like a child saying, “What am I doing wrong?” The answer should be, “Nothing, unless you consider not doing right to be terribly wrong.

When we read an expression like this in Matthew 10, you and I have to stop and think, “How much of what we have received have we truly given?” If we are truly God’s stewards, if God has placed His goods in our hands, then of all we have freely received, how much have we freely given? Our Lord wants us to receive from Him and give as we have freely received.

God said the reason that we have been forgiven is not because we deserve forgiveness. We have been forgiven by God for Christ’s sake. When the Lord God looks at the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the precious blood presented to God the Father in heaven, God forgives us for Christ’s sake, not for our sake. Because we have been the recipients of God’s forgiveness, mercy, and grace, He says that we ought to be stewards of His grace to others.

My mother-in-law taught me how to tithe and the responsibility I had to tithe. I was eighteen years old, and no one had ever said anything to me about it. My mother-in-law said to me when I was eighteen years old, “If you want God’s blessing on your life, if you want to be the right kind of husband to my daughter, then you ought to practice tithing as a conviction because you are a Christian and you want to have God’s blessing.” It was not the preacher; it was my mother-in-law. We all need someone to care enough about us to speak the truth in love.

If you hear someone teaching about doing something for God to the neglect of the family, I do not think they are teaching the Bible. God gives us assignments, and they never come into conflict. We conflict them, but God never means for them to conflict. His assignments do not conflict.

One of these days I am going to meet the Lord, and I am going to face the question, “Did I do the best with what God gave me?” What will the answer be? I do not think any man or woman who is honest can say, “We always did the best we could do.” Before we so readily condemn the unjust steward, we need to point our fingers at ourselves and say, “We have not done as we could have and should have done.

Someone recently called me from another part of the world and said, “I want you to know about someone who professed faith in Christ. It was after reading your little booklet entitled, God So Loved the World. We give that booklet out in the U.S. to thousands of people. We give it out door-to-door when visiting people.” I remember writing and rewriting that little booklet, taking all manner of pains trying to get the simple gospel message across clearly. That was a very difficult thing to do, presenting it in a way to people so it could be printed and be given out, and translated into different languages. Then someone called and said, “I got saved because of that.” I know others have also. Was that a wise investment, to work on that, to print it, and to put it into people’s hands? Yes! We are going to see people in heaven because of that.

The Christian life is not living a life that is a little better than people who are not Christians; it is living a life that is totally different.

He goes on to say, “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise” (Luke 6:31). In other words, you begin the good. Initiate the good. As you understand what you would like for people to do to you, you go ahead and make the first move; you initiate, you begin the good.

We have the habit of saying, “This is my house. This is my car. This is my land.” Talking like this is a hard habit to break. There is really only one owner, and the rest of us are stewards of what He owns.

In Genesis 17, Abraham was given land to possess, but God owned it. Abraham possessed the land, and Abraham’s seed would possess the land. Possession is not ownership. You and I are going to travel through this world possessing many things. We might say those things are ours, but possession does not mean ownership.

Stewardship declares our absolute dependence upon the God who will freely give us all things. Will God really provide? God says, “How could you ever doubt that I would provide what you need when I have already given you my Son?

What we do with our time is what we do with our lives. Time is a gift from God. What we do with our time can be our gift to God. Time is synonymous with life. If we are convinced we shall answer to God for what we did with our lives, then we should also be convinced that we must answer to Him for our time.

No reserves. No retreats. No regrets.” He found the secret of I John 2:17: “And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” It is just like our God, our all-wise God, to create the Christian life so that as we apply our hearts to wisdom on a daily basis and have the proper stewardship of our time, what we do in time with our days will abide forever.

Many people have the idea that some time or another in life they are going to take care of the real necessities—the things that are vital, the things that are of utmost importance—and they wait until late in life to do it, and have laid no foundation for life. What a horrible mistake. We are going to leave this world someday, but God is giving us an opportunity while we are here to invest in eternity.

It is not right for us to talk about what a needy world we live in and how messed up people are without being willing to obey God in the matter of giving.

Our giving comes down to a heart matter. God is always interested in our heart. I refuse to reduce the Christian faith to manipulation. I refuse to reduce the Christian faith to gimmicks, trying to trick people into doing what they ought to do. It must always remain a matter of our heart given to God.

No matter who you are or what you think about yourself or what opinions you think others have of you, you need to go immediately to being accepted in the beloved. In other words, you need to know that God has made you, and He loves you just as you are. You do not have to earn His love. You do not have to do something to cause God to like you. He already loves you with an everlasting love, and He has endowed you and gifted you.

I want to tell you no matter what you are doing, if you are doing it to honor the Lord, in a way that honors God, with a grateful heart, it is magnificent work.

So there are two sides of this. There is the gift side and there is the responsibility side. For what are you responsible? You are responsible for what God has given you.

Few men I know of have had the opportunity I have had and have been influenced by the people who have influenced me—to know personally men like John R. Rice; to have called my best friend for more than fifteen years men like Curtis Hutson; to be called the spiritual son of Dr. Lee Roberson; to have been the closest of friends with some of the great missionary leaders of our day like Dr. Don Sisk and Dr. James Ray; to have sat in meetings and been given the opportunity to speak in those meetings. Few men have been given the opportunity I have been given.

I once said to the people of our church, “We need to receive a big offering.” We had already invested seven million dollars. “We have to finish building this auditorium, and we have two weeks to do it. It cannot just be a small thing you do. You have to come through.” Two weeks later, our people gave $669,000 in one offering.

We are going to answer to God for what we have done with what God has given us and for what we could have done.

If we limit our understanding of what God has given us to only money, then we forget that God has given us such things as health, opportunity, and influence.

Think of what God has done to devise such a plan for our lives. He connects “now” with “then.

If you do not get anything else, get this—all of us are facing our “then.” It is inevitable. Every one of us has a last moment. We are going to stand face to face with God and review our lives, every one of us. The Lord is placing that emphasis in this passage of Scripture in Luke 12.

The goal in life is not simply to profess faith in Christ; the goal is to place your faith in Christ in order to become a true follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is possible to live on earth, and when we die, our goods go with us. If we are rich toward God and have treasures in heaven, we will meet it all again, except it will be multiplied a hundredfold or more. Will that not be wonderful

When you say John 3:16, insert your name. “For God so loved Clarence Sexton, that He gave His only begotten Son, that if Clarence Sexton would believe in Him, then Clarence Sexton would not perish, but have everlasting life.” Put your name in there. God wrote to His beloved people Israel in Malachi, and He put their name in and declared to them, “I love you.

Paul, under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, wrote in II Timothy 3:1-4, This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. In verse five God’s Word says, “Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof….” The characteristic of our age is that we have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof. When you look at the book of Malachi, God is speaking to His people. He is speaking to a remnant of believing people, and He is saying there must be more than a form; there must be the power.

Some say, “Do you mean to tell me that if we all tithe and give offerings, there will be the accumulative effect of enough money?” Enough offering means some of that offering is in time, talent, ability, and gospel giving.

A man called me who watches our television program and said, “We are taking an offering for you, and we would like to give an offering to the gospel work in England. You just mentioned it in the sermon.” I said, “We would deeply appreciate it.” He said, “Maybe we can raise ten thousand dollars.” I said, “Oh, that would be so greatly appreciated because we are trying to open another chapel in another city in England, training the people to go there.” He called me after he took the offering and he said, “We do not have ten thousand, we have twenty, and we may have twenty more coming.” What did God do? I thank God for those people, but I am telling you the Lord raised the windows open in heaven.

I received a phone call from England one evening. It was about three in the morning in England. I said, “What in the world are you people doing up this time of night?” They said, “Oh Pastor, Pastor! We just had our one year anniversary, and we had over one hundred people here. We are celebrating how many people have been saved and what God is doing in this place, and we just want to thank you and thank the Temple Baptist Church, that God has used you to make all of this possible.” I thought to myself, “God said, ‘You bring; I will prove.

When Christ says, “Occupy till I come,” He does not mean that we ought to cumber the ground and just take up space. There is work to be done for Him!

The work of “occupying” is laboring to see these citizens changed, coming to Christ. The great illustration of this is in Luke 19:1-10.

Stewardship, living our lives between these nothings—“nothing into…nothing out”—is about living a life of obedience to our heavenly Father.

God says, “Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy” (I Timothy 6:17). God wants us to enjoy this life between these two nothings—nothing in, nothing out. It is not just to enjoy in eternity. Why do we lead people to believe that the only time a Christian is going to have any joy is when he gets to heaven?

Some people have done everything imaginable for their children except practice a life of obedience to God. The greatest gift you can give your children is the gift of your personal obedience to God. If you disobey God in an area, then you are sinning against your children.

Every Christian is God’s steward. The English word “steward” we find in our Bible is derived from a root word having to do with the keeper of a pigsty, the ward of a sty, or a steward. This person had the responsibility to care for the pigs. We find that a steward manages someone else’s property.

The Devil does not always use bad things. He gets more of his work done using good things. He gets much more damage done as an angel of light rather than as a roaring lion walking about “seeking whom he may devour” (I Peter 5:8). He will give you a good idea that is not in agreement with what God says. He will give you something good to do with your life that seems wonderful as far as this world is concerned, but it is actually a waste of our lives because it has no eternal effect on the world to come.

The one requirement God makes of a steward is that the steward be faithful.

The Bible says, “But godliness with contentment is great gain” (I Timothy 6:6). Do you know why it is great gain? Because there is nothing you can add to it. It totally satisfies. You cannot buy it with money. You cannot put someone in a classroom and teach it to him. It comes entirely from the Person of Jesus Christ as we live a life of obedience to Him—dead to self and Christ living in us.

God’s Word says in II Corinthians 8:9, speaking of the cross, “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.” This battle of stewardship is a battle over possessions. They do not belong to us. “The earth is the LORD’S, and the fulness thereof” (Psalm 24:1). Every man who believes that his possessions belong to him, whether he is

After all that Joseph went through, he said as a 110yearold man, “God never changes. God will do what He says. He will never vary. When God gets around to doing what He said, I want you to take my bones and carry them out of here.” He had faith to believe God.

Joshua, as you may know, was of the tribe of Ephraim, the tribe coming from the loins of Joseph. No doubt Joshua took keen delight in taking care of this responsibility himself because Joseph was his grandfather from many generations back. The Bible says in Joshua 24:32, “And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for an hundred pieces of silver: and it became the inheritance of the children of Joseph.

Notice the last statement God makes in Genesis 49:33, “And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost,…” God could have put a period there, but there is no period because that is not when it stops. That is where earthly vision stops. But the Bible is an eternal Book written by an eternal God who sees everything, so the next expression is given, “…and was gathered unto his people.

You may not have been called to a funeral home, but there are people living around you that you need to be concerned about. There are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters who need to hear of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. Determine that you are going to get out and do something to show concern for the living.

Joseph knew that his brethren were not going to be able to immediately take his body and transport it to the land of Canaan, the Land of Promise. But he said, “When you do leave, take my bones with you.

Would it not be wonderful if in all the glory days of our lives, when the sun is shining brightly and everything is going well, we trusted God with all our strength and might and lived for the Lord daily with all the desire possible? But it does not typically happen that way. It is during the days of darkness and the hours of great difficulty, during days of affliction when things go wrong, that we are made to realize we have a need, and we turn our hearts toward the Lord.

They believed him to be an Egyptian. They thought he was like every other Egyptian. They had been told about the true and living God, yet Joseph said to them, “…for I fear God.” When he spoke the name of God, no doubt their hearts were stirred.

We must come to the place by faith where we remove all secondary causes and understand how God has been in the twists and turns of our lives. With just one different little twist or turn, we could be a thousand miles from where we are today.

The great principle of forgiveness is, “Even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” You may not think that someone deserves to be forgiven, but that is not the point. Why do you think God has forgiven you? He did not forgive you because you deserved forgiveness. The Bible says, “Even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.

If you are a Christian and you say you cannot forgive, there is only one reason. The reason you cannot forgive is that you are not abiding in Christ, giving Him the place in your life He richly deserves. This is how Joseph was able to forgive his brethren and live with them as if they had never sinned against him.

Judah was at his wit’s end. He did not understand everything that had happened. He had no way to explain how the cup got into Benjamin’s sack. He did not know all the details. He could have thrown up his hands and said, “Why is all this going on?” But he realized God was in it and he said, “What shall we say unto my lord? what shall we speak? or how shall we clear ourselves? God hath found out the iniquity of thy servants.

Shiloh” means “rest.” This is one of the names used for our Lord Jesus. He is our rest. God revealed to Jacob that Judah was the son who would form the tribe from which the Lord Jesus Christ, the promised Savior, would come.

Let us consider a chapter in the Bible that we often skip because it contains such a bad story. In chapter thirty-eight of Genesis, Judah had a child by his own daughter-in-law. He mistook her for a harlot. I am trying to tell you that God’s ways are not our ways. I am not saying that God was in favor of Judah and his daughterinlaw in their awful act, but I am saying that in spite of everything we think, God is able to work.

We had a certain lady in our church who was always in distress; at least she thought she was. On one occasion, she came to the pastor when I was standing by his side and started talking to him about all the things that had been going wrong in her life. Brother Hagan simply asked, “Has God forsaken you?” It shocked her. She said, “No.” He said, “Then nothing is as bad as you think it is.

This birthright was going to be shared, not by the one we think would get the birthright, but by Joseph and Judah. Jacob would say to Judah that Judah would share in the authority of the birthright. Joseph was going to share in the double inheritance of the birthright with his boys, Ephraim and Manasseh

I choose to dwell on the good things, the blessed times, the precious moments in my life.

If we are not careful, we will get in some ditch of despair or discouragement and we will forget the good among the bad. I think we need to say by God’s grace, “I’m not going to forget all the precious things God has done for me.

If you have any good thing to say to someone to encourage him or express your love to him, you should do it now. Do what you can while you can.

Joseph was in a place of affliction. He was in a strange place, a place he would never truly call home. After years of living in Egypt, Joseph would say to his brethren, “When I die, get my bones out of here.” And they did carry his bones out of Egypt and took them back to the land of his birth to bury them.

If you are one of God’s children, I hope you allow the Lord an opportunity to speak to you by His Spirit and come to realize that God is with you no matter where you may be.

But when they reached the southern tip of the land, before they ever went out of the Promised Land, before they left Canaan, Jacob said, “Stop the wagons. I know we are in a hurry to get to Egypt. I know we are excited about seeing Joseph, but there is something more important than seeing Joseph. We must thank the Lord!

There is a world of difference between thinking about the Lord and actually thanking the Lord. Thanking God is not simply thinking, “Well, this came from the Lord. Isn’t God good?” We must take the time from everything else to thank the Lord, to call out to God and say, “Lord, we know this came from You and we want to thank You for it.

But God is at work on the other end. God is working in the lives of people that we have to deal with, people whose lives touch our lives day by day. God is working on the other end.

My confidence is in the quiet place, in the secret place of my life, where I have chosen to honor God and I believe that God will keep His Word.

Millions have come to the Lord because someone on this end prayed and God worked on the other end to bring them to Christ. This is the way the Lord works. This is the way God moves. God speaks to people. In Psalm 85:8 the Bible says, “I will hear what God the LORD will speak: for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn again to folly.” God will speak to us. If you have read Genesis chapter forty-one, you know that through a dream God stirred Pharaoh and also prodded the memory of the butler. God spoke to those men. God dealt with them.

The fact is, God allows the circumstances, and through the circumstances He speaks to us. So often our disappointments are His appointments.

The “prime of life” is anytime in life when we are in the center of God’s will.

The Bible says in Genesis 39:23, “And the LORD was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. And his master saw that the LORD was with him, and that the LORD made all that he did to prosper in his hand.” Not only was the Lord with Joseph, but also Potiphar was a witness to the fact that the Lord was with Joseph. When God has His hand on someone, others can see it.

Verse twelve says, “And she caught him by his garment, saying, Lie with me: and he left his garment in her hand, and fled, and got him out.” Joseph lost his coat, but he kept his character.

Remember, there is no disappointment in Jesus Christ. In the hour of disappointment, the Lord is with you. In the hour of loneliness, in the hour of temptation, in the hour of uncertainty, in the hour of awful disappointment, all that has sustained me is to know the Lord is with me.

Joseph was a lonely man carried down into Egypt away from his home and homeland, away from his family. The Bible says in the hour of his loneliness, the Lord was with him. Just as the Lord was with Joseph, He has promised those who know Him, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5).

The Word of God says in Genesis 39:3, “And his master saw that the LORD was with him, and that the LORD made all that he did to prosper in his hand.” Do you know that God is with you? No matter what men do to you or choose to say about you, if you walk with God, God will honor your life. He will bless you and take care of you.

The Bible says in verse twenty-two, “And the keeper of the prison committed to Joseph’s hand all the prisoners that were in the prison.” Even in prison, God gave Joseph favor. This reminds us that the Word of God says in Proverbs 22:1, “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold.

If we do not understand how Joseph could embrace and kiss his brothers who had sinned against him, may the Lord reveal to us something far greater. When we think of our Savior, we must realize that it was our sins, not His, that sent Him to the cross. The Bible says in Isaiah 53:5, “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

When Joseph grew old and was nearing death, he spoke to his brethren with great confidence in God. He looked back across his life and understood that God had sent him to Egypt in order to preserve the lives of many people, including his own father and family. He said to his brothers in Genesis 50:20, “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.

God put something in his heart that he could hold to in the darkest hours of life. God built something into his character that made him into the giant of a man he became in Egypt to deliver the people of God. God prepared Joseph, not only by what He revealed to him through dreams, but also by what He allowed him to go through as a young man.

However, all sorrow is not because of our disobedience to God. Some of us are going to suffer simply because we are part of this human race and we are all dying people.

Some sorrow is without explanation. I do not think there is any way to explain all suffering. Whatever the reason, the Lord wants to use suffering to bring us unto Himself.

The Lord opens our hearts through sorrow, trouble, and suffering. God opens our hearts to hear His Word and to strengthen us. My dear friend Dr. Lee Roberson said, “There is no greatness in life apart from trouble that is dealt with in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

We have developed a new term for this generation of children. They are called “throwaway children.” Parents can do without them. How tragic! A survey done by Pennsylvania State University revealed that as many as one thousand children per week in America are abandoned by their parents. But God brings trouble, sorrow, and heartache into our lives at times to teach us how to love our loved ones more deeply and to show us how important our families truly are.

No matter what comes to you, no matter what awful things befall you, keep your eyes on the Lord.