Good is what we do
Notes
Transcript
Years ago, my daughter was in college and we went to hang out with her in Waco at the church she attended.
The pastor began with something I still think is really cool. He asked everyone to look around, and do something really Christian, but really basic, really nice, to pray for the person near you.
Pray for them to have a blessing, to hear from the Lord, to be aware of the Lord today. We can pray for any one any day, any time but today especially lets take time.
I still think it is incredibly kind and cool. So let’s do it. Look around. You don’t need to acknowledge them or anything, just pray for a blessing for them by name or by detail today. That they hear form God today.
Pray for the person near you
Pray for the person near you
The scripture for today is kind of simple. Here it is:
27 Do not withhold good from those who deserve it when it’s in your power to help them.
28 If you can help your neighbor now, don’t say, “Come back tomorrow, and then I’ll help you.”
I can hear you in your mind right now, “So Bill, what your saying the Bible says is we should do good to others. Great. Mind-Shattering. In what way do you think we didn’t know that already Pastor. This is going to be 20 minutes of stuff we already know - come to church, to learn to be good. Wow, I get to tell people this week that at my church, this Sunday, that I should be nice to people.”
Honestly, the words I think you say in your head about me, aren’t very nice, are they. Do I need to work on that?
Anyway, thank you for coming today and learning that you need to do the good to someone near you and not put it off.
Even though almost everyone you ask would tell you that if you are a follower of Jesus than you should be nice to people. You should be kind. You should do good.
But even though it is a basic, can I ask, do you do it?
Like if people are doing that thing where they complain about the state of the world and ask where have all the good people in the world gone.
Do you say, “I’m present.”
You follower of Jesus. You christian are supposed to be the good one. The kind one. The one whom people can count on to do the right thing. The good thing.
Ever been in a place where everyone shouted, “is there a doctor?”
Can you imagine hearing: “is there someone good?” And knowing that means you!
Instead these times just appear and we get to rise or miss.
16 Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.
A righteous person. Weird that I bring up sins and the term “righteous person” right after I speak about “good.” Because in our culture, in our day to day, people often judge good by “feels.” Do I feel better after I did what I did for them? Are they better? Are they happier? Am I a gooder person?
That’s horrible grammar to prove something.
Way before Comic books a philosophical question was posed, “if you were invisible what would you do?”
The basic laws of physics still exist but no one can see you. What would you do?
Totally invisible but fully aware.
Many who answer this think of something they would get in trouble for if people could see them.
Often the idea of helping people with our super power is far down the list.
Thank God, Plus one for the need for accountability and plus two for the need for us to follow our God.
Some of you might say, “I’m not a righteous person,” because we know of how much a failure that we are. We know that our sinful nature still remains, but Jesus would look at you and ask, don’t you say you follow me? At the end of your life, you expect people to say, “we are so glad we will see him again with Jesus,” If that is true, we of all people cannot be the people who sit back and say, no one is perfect. We aren’t that great. Repent and embrace the new life we have in Jesus.
17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!
So since your a pursuer of righteous, do the good, especially when your invisible.
I need to tell you a story about opportunity just popping up.
On a dark night, way back, bc, before covid, it was a fall night and my in-laws where visiting and most of the homes in my neighborhood had not yet been built. There was only about 10 or 12 homes in undeveloped area.
A ring of the doorbell, I went to the turned on the light. A slightly built, twenty something, woman I never met before stood before me and said call an ambulance.
I looked past her and didn’t see a car, an accident, no blood, nothing.
I asked are you hurt? What’s wrong. She said, “I need help.” A woman, I didn’t know, out of nowhere.
This really happened. It was dark, only her and I. My family was in the house not paying attention at all to me at the door.
What happened next reveals. Different people will have different ends to this story and I have mind.
In life, there are moments that reveal us and where we are at, at that moment. Like whenever my students take off running in a direction they aren’t supposed to go it becomes clearly evident for the next week that I am old and don’t work out enough.
In these moments our actions, our eyes, what we do, reveals.
But why did this happen. I want you to think about something my righteous friends, made righteous because of the amazing work of the Holy Spirit in your lives,
If you are a follower of Jesus than you are called to a job. Here it is:
20 So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!”
In a foreign country the American flag will fly on a building signaling to all that if they want help from America, to get to America, to deal with the United States or if there are Americans than they need to go to the embassy and receive help from the Ambassador. The US Ambassador represents our government.
Yet more importantly, here on this earth you are the ambassador of Jesus. You represent Christ to your family, to your kids, to your neighbor, to your co-workers, to your nurses, doctors, and everyone around you.
So why wouldn’t the Holy Spirit, the Angels, all the heavenly forces direct someone to you, because you are the ambassador of Christ Jesus!
So this woman shows up on my doorstep.
The woman said call an ambulance so I offered her a seat on my porch and called 911.
Why did I keep her outside?
Jesus said
16 “Look, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. So be as shrewd as snakes and harmless as doves.
There will be times when we are called to take on pain like Jesus took on for us but we don’t go looking for pain.
Now some could say, well you shouldn’t of answered the door either. Answering the door is stupid. People break in, they can use what appears to be good for evil.
Truth is all opportunities for help can also be manipulated into an opportunity for evil, for laziness, for harm.
So will we disappear?
Will we live in fear?
Or will we live in wisdom and with the knowledge that the Holy Spirit guides us.
We can avoid danger and call it wisdom when it is actually cowardice and a lack of faith.
But how do we know?
What scripture, what rule do we apply?
Have you considered that Jesus was met by crowds who came to kill him:
28 When they heard this, the people in the synagogue were furious.
29 Jumping up, they mobbed him and forced him to the edge of the hill on which the town was built. They intended to push him over the cliff,
30 but he passed right through the crowd and went on his way.
But a few years later when another crowd comes to an area where all of Jesus disciples are:
47 But even as Jesus said this, a crowd approached, led by Judas, one of the twelve disciples. Judas walked over to Jesus to greet him with a kiss.
48 But Jesus said, “Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?”
49 When the other disciples saw what was about to happen, they exclaimed, “Lord, should we fight? We brought the swords!”
50 And one of them struck at the high priest’s slave, slashing off his right ear.
51 But Jesus said, “No more of this.” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him.
52 Then Jesus spoke to the leading priests, the captains of the Temple guard, and the elders who had come for him. “Am I some dangerous revolutionary,” he asked, “that you come with swords and clubs to arrest me?
53 Why didn’t you arrest me in the Temple? I was there every day. But this is your moment, the time when the power of darkness reigns.”
54 So they arrested him and led him to the high priest’s home. And Peter followed at a distance.
God is always powerful.
The only difference in those situations, is the
Fullness of Time
Fullness of Time
A fancy way to say God desired for Jesus to hand himself over at that time. In the previous time, God did not desire Jesus to be handed over. This is not a results bias either, it is the thought process of a relationship, the changing dynamics of situations where rules in one situation have changed because a different purpose is happening and instead what is relied on is a relationship with Jesus Christ so that the person is not looking for their own benefit but for the blessing of God.
At school, I will tell my staff to help me keep all the students in their seats. But then one student, I tell them let him up. Its ok. Another students gets to go to the bathroom by themselves and another student gets grabbed as soon as they head to the door. It’s because the situations change, their are higher purposes I have and I don’t have time and sometimes my staff doesn’t have the knowledge for me to explain all of them, I need for them to trust me so that our special needs students can grow and learn safely.
How much more do we need to rely on a relationship with God in our lives, an intimate life living of the fruits of the Spirit, and a healthy relationship with the Holy Spirit to know God’s direction.
16 I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit.
Paul wrote that from prison.
Do not let fear take you from the opportunity for good or the cost of good stop you, and don’t reward naiveness like it is faith. True courage is knowing the danger and stepping into the place to do good, with responsibiliyt and wisdom, empowered because you know that good is that God would have you do.
Remember, I left my story at the doorway. My family is inside. Its dark, no accident, just a woman at my door saying call an ambulance and I closed the door.
I went and got a phone and called 911. I sat with her, she still didn’t make much sense but I sat with her. My family brought me a cup of water for her but she said she thought she was going to have a seizure. I told dispatch that and it did seem like the first responders were coming a little faster. The ambulance, police, fire truck arrived. They went to work as confused as I was and the police began asking me questions.
They determined that the woman had been released from the hospital earlier that day, obviously too early, got too confused and wandered pretty far. They were taking her back to the hospital to get treatment.
The cops said,
“how good that she found you and not somebody who would shoot her.”
People ask why aren’t there more helpful people in the world? Where did the kind people go?
They are also asking why are all the Christians shooting others.
Neither of those things are totally true, but I have to ask you, when these moments come,
When people ask where are the kind people? They are asking for you!
When people ask where are the kind people? They are asking for you!
27 When it is in your power,
don’t withhold good from the one to whom it belongs.
28 Don’t say to your neighbor, “Go away! Come back later.
I’ll give it tomorrow”—when it is there with you.
My friend and mentor Doug Sala would say that our following of Jesus happens at the margins. Most people, go to work, go home, live usual lives of not trying to be bad people.
The issue is will you leave enough time, money, space in your life to do something when God makes it available to do the good that comes your way.
On the Stanford SPARQ, Sarah Lyons-Padilla wrote a summary of a famous study,
Social psychologists John Darley and Daniel Batson wanted to know why people help in some situations but not others. They decided to study one allegedly charitable group: seminary students training to become ministers.
The researchers asked each of 67 seminary students to deliver a sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan, a Bible story about helping strangers in need. The researchers then randomly assigned the students to one of two conditions. In the hurried condition, a research assistant concluded the sermon instructions with “Oh, you’re late. They were expecting you a few minutes ago. We’d better get moving.”
In the unhurried condition, the research assistant ended the instructions with, “It’ll be a few minutes before they’re ready for you, but you might as well head on over.”
Each student walked alone to the building where he would deliver the sermon. On the way, the student encountered a man slumped in a doorway with his eyes closed, coughing and moaning, clearly in distress.
From afar, researchers watched: Would the seminary student stop to help the stranger in need?
Darley and Batson found that only 10% of seminary students in the hurried condition stopped to help the man. In comparison, 63% of the participants in the unhurried condition stopped. In other words, being in a hurry can lead even a seminary student with the Good Samaritan on the mind to ignore a person in distress.
27 Do not withhold good from those who deserve it when it’s in your power to help them.
28 If you can help your neighbor now, don’t say, “Come back tomorrow, and then I’ll help you.”
When it is in your power to help. You may have the ability to slow down. You may not. What determines that ability and whether it is right or not? The Holy Spirit.
17 He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you.
Today is not me telling everyone to slow down. Some of you might need to speed up.
Obedience can look like opening a door, doing your job very well, making a phone call, attending meetings, even buying an item.
Some of it can be busy and some relaxed.
It is the action of helping or getting prepared to help. It doesn’t mean how many you help. It doesn’t mean fixing the problem. A relationship might begins, even if the person is thankful or wise in how they receive your help.
It might even mean telling someone hard truth that they will hate and might hate you too. Not because your an arrogant jerk who thinks they no everything but because the Lord God led you to tell.
It doesn’t matter if it makes a nice story. What matters is obedience to the Holy Spirit. You are the good we are all looking for.
But you are not the savior of the world, you just work for him.
14 He gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people for his own possession, eager to do good works.
18 Instruct them to do what is good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and willing to share,
We are saved by Christ for doing good now. For bringing the kingdom of Heaven here.
In this neighborhood there is a group of people who try and support each other, encourage each other to do good things in their lives, with their families and with their actions. That search for ways they can do more good and look far and wide for things no one could possibly see coming that could help. This group sees lives go from misery to joy. Sees people go from poverty to wealth. See miracles and the hand of God move. Things are more right there.
That group is us.
We gather to encourage and help each other do good in our lives.
We gather to encourage and help each other do good in our lives.
If it isn’t us, but we are a group that gathers to see how we can feel better, have fun, be happy, do a program relieve our guilt than church loses its vitality, we lose what we are meant to be.
27 When it is in your power,
don’t withhold good from the one to whom it belongs.
28 Don’t say to your neighbor, “Go away! Come back later.
I’ll give it tomorrow”—when it is there with you.
When you become aware of your power to bring good, the action you can do, the time to do that good is right now.
When you become aware of your power to bring good, the action you can do, the time to do that good is right now.
Remember the lady at the door. God brought that lady to my door because I was the person who could help her. I was his angel in the moment.
You see their are many people who are hurting in this world and many more who will take advantage of the hurt. For sexual gratification, to make money, to get power, to fill emotional problems, very few people will actually just do good. Love the other.
You are that few. You are the army of good.
God wants to bless you with the opportunity to be His hands and feet
Ask the Lord today and everyday to be the one who does the good!
