Our Starting Point: “What’s best for me?”
- We usually end up with a self-centered mentality. We look out for ourselves. And that is certainly encouraged within our society. We are a “winner-take-all” place where everyone looks out for themselves.
- What responsibility do we have to those around us? Specifically, what responsibility do we have to those who are at the edges of society? The struggling and the weak? That’s where I want to concentrate this morning.
- As usual, the question we want to ask is not, “What do I think we should do?” or “How do I want to handle it?” The optimal question is “What has God said about it?” We want to know the Bible’s instruction on this issue and consider how it aligns with our own.
A Problem With That: There are a ton of Bible passages that share God’s concern for the vulnerable.
- Luke 14:12-14.
- Some verses on this idea (not exhaustive): Exodus 22:21-27; Exodus 23:2-3, 6-7, 9; Leviticus 16:29-30; Leviticus 19:9-10, 13, 15, 33-34; Leviticus 23:22; Leviticus 24:22; Leviticus 25:35-39; Numbers 15:16; Numbers 35:15; Deuteronomy 10:18-19; Deuteronomy 14:29; Deuteronomy 15:7-11; Deuteronomy 24:14-22; Deuteronomy 27:19; 1 Kings 8:41-43; Job 5:15-16; Job 24:4, 9-10; Job 31:32; Psalm 9:9; Psalm 10:17-18; Psalm 33:5; Psalm 34:6; Psalm 72:2, 13; Psalm 82:3-4; Psalm 89:14; Psalm 94:6; Psalm 103:6; Psalm 113:7; Psalm 146:7, 9; Proverbs 14:31; Proverbs 22:22-23; Proverbs 31:8-9; Isaiah 1:17; Isaiah 3:14-15; Isaiah 10:1-4; Isaiah 11:1-4; Isaiah 25:4; Isaiah 42:3-4; Isaiah 56:1; Isaiah 58:6-11; Jeremiah 2:34; Jeremiah 5:28; Jeremiah 7:5-7; Jeremiah 22:3, 13; Ezekiel 16:49-50; Ezekiel 18:7-8, 12-13; Ezekiel 22:7, 29; Daniel 4:27; Amos 5:11-12, 24; Zechariah 7:8-10; Malachi 3:5; Matthew 11:1-5; Matthew 25:31-46; Luke 4:14-21; Luke 10:29-37; Luke 11:42; Luke 14:12-14; Romans 15:26; Galatians 2:10; Hebrews 13:2; James 1:27; James 2:1-8; 1 John 3:17.
- I want to start with this unusual and obscure gospel passage (Luke 14:12-14). Jesus has been talking about how everyone seeks the places of honor when they gather for a big gathering. He encourages His followers to take the lesser place. He concludes with the powerful spiritual principle that the one who exalts himself with be humbled but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
- But then Jesus adds a postscript. Having talked to the guests, Jesus turns His attention to the host. Instead of inviting the powerful, connected, and urbane to the lunch, Jesus tells him to invite “the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.” Doing so will leave the host “blessed.”
- Let’s state this as flatly as we can: we don’t believe Jesus on this point. We flagrantly ignore His teaching. It’s not that understanding it is an issue – it’s a simple idea. It’s not that we don’t have the resources – we have a home and food. It’s simply that we read what Jesus has to say here about how we are to treat the vulnerable and we respond, “Nope.”
- That’s not unusual when it comes to the Bible’s teaching on the vulnerable. The teaching is clear and voluminous. How voluminous? Turn over your sermon outline. I have there a list of some of the verses that deal with God’s commands and thoughts about the vulnerable: the poor, the weak, the oppressed, the alien, the foreigner. It fills the whole page. And this is not an exhaustive list.
- What does that tell us? God has a great concern for the vulnerable. Do we? Nah, we’re too busy looking out for what’s best for me.
- Some of the more interesting commands come from the Old Testament. As God gave the Law to Israel, it was a unique opportunity for Him to express His priorities. One of the things we learn from that concerns the vulnerable.
- He tells them not to harvest to the edges of their fields, but to leave the edges for the poor to get something to eat.
- He tells them that they must treat the foreigner the same way they would treat an Israelite and not abuse him.
- He tells them that when the rich use their power to exploit the poor that He will be watching and will be on the side of the poor.
- We need to pause and take this all in. God has spoken a lot about this and we don’t like what He has to say. It gets in the way of our “what’s best for me” approach.
- Maybe our objection is personal – we don’t want to be concerned about anyone but ourselves. We have the right to do that, but it puts us standing in opposition to God.
- Maybe our objection is financial – we don’t want to spend our money on others. We have a right to do that, but it puts us standing in opposition to God.
- Maybe our objection is social – we think that everyone should stand on their own. We have a right to think that, but it puts us standing in opposition to God.
- Maybe our objection is political – that’s not the way our party thinks. We have a right to think that, but it puts us standing in opposition to God.
- Let’s look at three key passages for us to flesh this out.
Three Key Passages:
1. We still don’t like Jesus’ answer to “who is my neighbor?”
- Luke 10:29-37.
- Look with me in Luke 10. Here we have the famous story of the “good Samaritan.” What’s the set-up to this story?
- Jesus has been answering what the greatest commandments are. “Love God” and “love your neighbor” is His response. The questioner is hoping for a narrow definition of who exactly qualifies as His neighbor.
- In response to His question “Who is my neighbor?”, Jesus tells a story. There’s a ton of interesting details in this story, but I just want to highlight two.
a. Jesus makes the man who offers help a Samaritan.
- Now that means little to us today because we’re not from that region, but back then it lit a fire under His listeners. The Jewish people listening to Jesus hated the Samaritans. They were their mortal enemies.
- It would be like Jesus telling the story and making a homosexual activist the hero of the story. It would be someone we have strong disagreements with and would not want to see as the hero of the story.
b. Jesus makes the victim someone the Samaritan had never met.
- The Samaritan does not stumble upon a long-lost friend and jump in to nurse him back to health. The Samaritan does not see someone wearing a shirt that marks him as being from his own hometown, so he feels compelled to take care of one of his own people.
- The Samaritan has never met the man. He has compassion simply because the man is another human being.
- This is Jesus’ answer to “who is my neighbor?”
- We still don’t like Jesus’ answer to the question.
- We are ok with taking care of our family. We are ok with sacrificing for our friends. We are ok with helping out those in our community who are like us.
- We don’t like that this story calls us to show compassion to those who are unlike us. We don’t like that this story calls us to show compassion to those who we don’t know.
- And yet this was Jesus’ answer to the question. It was provocative then; it’s provocative now. It made them uncomfortable then; it makes us uncomfortable now.
2. How we act toward the vulnerable is how we act toward Jesus.
- Matthew 25:25:31-46.
- In Matthew 25, Jesus tells His famous story of the “least of these.” There are three details I want to emphasize:
a. These are all actions toward the vulnerable.
- The descriptions aren’t exactly the same as I used a moment ago, but it’s the same people group: the vulnerable. The hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the prisoner all fall in that category.
b. It’s not just that Jesus is vaguely interested toward them – He identifies Himself with them.
- Verse 40 has the incredible line: what you did for the least of the brothers, you did for Jesus. That means that Jesus is closely paying attention to what we do on this because He identifies closely to these folks.
c. How important is this? It’s how the sheep and goats get separated!
- This is not a side issue. This is not a “you can if you want” issue. This is not an optional issue.
- This fact raises questions for some people. “I thought the dividing line was accepting Christ by faith – why does Jesus say here that He is separating them by what they did to the least of these?” There are an abundance of other passages that make it clear that salvation is by grace through faith. I think what we’re seeing here is this: this type of mercy and compassion is such a natural part of living the true Christian life that you can use it to divide the people.
- In other words, this is a defining characteristic for a true Christian.
- In sum, when you add all this up, it highlights how central to our actions as Christians this should be and how much attention God is paying to it. We need to get this right.
3. A first step in the right direction is to allow the Golden Rule to twist our selfishness.
- Matthew 7:12.
- This is a big and multifaceted issue, but I do want to talk about a first step in a better direction. It’s a deceptively simple idea: the Golden Rule.
- In Matthew 7:12 we read Jesus’ words: “do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” It’s easy for us to dismiss the Golden Rule as a child’s lesson, but there’s some teeth to this teaching.
- What are the teeth? It’s that the Golden Rule twists our selfishness. The title of this sermon is about “what’s best for me.” That comes easy for us – we all want what’s best for ourselves. We don’t have to force ourselves to do that. We don’t have to remind ourselves to remember that. It comes naturally. We all have our own best interests at heart because, well, we’re us.
- It’s for that reason that the Golden Rule is genius. It takes our own innate selfishness and asks us to extend that consideration toward others. Thinking about what we would want makes sure that we’ll get a robust answer. Our selfishness ensures that. Then we turn that around and extend the same consideration away from us.
- This is a key first step toward doing better on this issue. We usually don’t extend such consideration toward the vulnerable. We blame them or dismiss them or ignore them or avoid them. We almost never treat them as we would like to be treated. It’s simple but transforming.
Conclusion:
- Most of us struggle with this in a whole host of situations.
- We’re quick to blame the poor, but not keen on discovering those situations where it wasn’t their fault they ended up in that situation. It’s easier to just presume it’s their fault.
- We don’t care what happens in prison. “Hey, it’s their fault they ended up there, so who cares how they’re treated?”
- We ignore those struggling. “I don’t have time to mess with your mess,” we think to ourselves as we deliberately overlook the warning signs.
- We only think about the backpack people (the “druggies”) in terms of how they’re ruining our town and never that they’re people too made in the image of God.
- As I conclude, I’m going to pick one of the hardest situations when we talk about the vulnerable. I’m going to talk about refugees.
- Our world is in turmoil and there are a lot of people fleeing violence. We as conservative American Christians are not very sympathetic to the plight of refugees.
- Let me be clear up front: I’m not advocating opening our borders and letting everybody in. There are some refugees we can take and others than perhaps we can supply temporary help for in their moment of need. The key question I’m asking myself on this most challenging issue is this: when I hear of someone in such a plight, is my first response one of fear (“Stay out of my country!”) or compassions (“Is there some way I can help?”). We can disagree about the best way to handle the response to vulnerable refugees, but the Bible instructs us that we are do the things we’ve been talking about: see them as my neighbor, know that I’m trying to help them as though I’m helping Jesus, and treat them the way I’d want to be treated. If I was a refugee, I know a given country can’t take everyone, but could you get me clean water and a tent to sleep in while I’m trying to find a new home?
- There was a troubling survey taken recently by Pew Research. Asked if the U.S. has a responsibility to help refugees, the group least likely to think we should help was breathtaking: white evangelical Protestants. That does not speak well for the compassion we are to have toward the vulnerable.
- Given that result, let me close with this. Sometimes the thing helps us the most in such a situation is personally knowing someone in that plight. The ones most likely to be concerned about the addicted are those with loved ones who are addicted. The ones most likely to be concerned about prisoners are those with friends in prison.
- So let’s stick for a second with this most difficult issue and let me tell you about someone I know who was a refugee.
Sometimes It Helps To Know Someone: The guy I know who dealt with this is named Jesus.
- We’re all familiar with all the terrible violence that’s going on today in Syria. Well, my friend lived to the southwest of there. Today there are thousands of political refugees from the violence in Syria. Well, my friend was a refugee from political violence also. The government was slaughtering people like him, so he and his family had to flee. They ended up remaining as political refugees in a foreign country for several years before things got better and they could return home.
- My friend’s name is Jesus.
- This passage is Matthew 2:13-20.
- His family fled the political violence caused when Herod decided to slaughter all the boys under the age of 2. Herod was concerned about this report of a king being born. He didn’t want to give up his political power, so he decided that killing them all was the best choice. So Jesus became a political refugee and fled to Egypt.
- I mention this because it’s easy to dismiss entire people groups: the poor, the weak, refugees, the oppressed, addicts. When you personally know someone who is in that group, though, it becomes personal. People may trash all addicts until they have someone in their family become addicted. Then it’s not as neat and clean. Then there’s a sympathy and concern that wasn’t there before.
- The operative word I’ve been using this morning is “vulnerable.” When it comes to knowing someone who was in one of these vulnerable groups, we all know someone. His name is Jesus. And that should color how we respond to the vulnerable.
