God Helps Those Who Help Themselves (not)

This is our final week in our series “True or False” and I’ve got to say, I’ve really enjoyed each of these messages so far. If you’ve missed it or you have already forgotten — this series has been exploring things that Christians often say that the Bible might not agree with, at least not completely. So we’ve kind of refuted, debunked, or rearranged these sayings so far — God won’t give you more than you can handle // The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it // Everything happens for a reason // and Love the sinner, hate the sin.

But today we are going to take on one that might really offend our sensibilities, because it is one that sounds completely reasonable to our understanding and experience of how the world works. Are you ready for it. If it’s one of your favorites I apologize. But its “God helps those who help themselves.”

Sounds good right? It’s like our go to Christian motivational speech. When we want someone to take charge of their lives and their decision making this “Well you know God helps those who help themselves” is a really strong way to almost guilt someone into change. Like man, I don’t want to stop God from helping me!

And I’m not going to say that on the truth o meter that this one comes up as a 100% fib. It’s rooted in some truth. It’s really a simple half-truth. God does help people who help themselves. Thats a fact. It’s actually provable by looking at a lot of different stories in the Bible. God loves human cooperation, it makes things quite a bit easier on him.

So there you have it, I haven’t completely taken this saying away from you. The problem really comes when this saying takes on a different form. You see we can say “God helps those who help themselves” and be completely genuine and truly mean “if you cooperate with God’s will for your life, God will bless you in your calling and make a way for you.” But that’s not really what is heard or understood most of the time. No, most of the time this saying takes on a new form — either in the way that we say it and mean it, or in the way that the person we are saying it to hears it. This becomes dangerous and 100% false when it becomes “God ONLY helps those who help themselves.” You see the subtle difference? Adding the word “only” changes everything. Before I totally shred this… I mean it’s low hanging fruit… I want to show you where this kind of thinking almost finds its home in the Bible.

Deconstruct the Idol

So I’m going to read from the 2nd Letter to the Thessalonian church, a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote. This comes from Chapter 3

Common English Bible Chapter 3

6 Brothers and sisters, we command you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to stay away from every brother or sister who lives an undisciplined life that is not in line with the traditions that you received from us. 7 You yourselves know how you need to imitate us because we were not undisciplined when we were with you. 8 We didn’t eat anyone’s food without paying for it. Instead, we worked night and day with effort and hard work so that we would not impose on you. 9 We did this to give you an example to imitate, not because we didn’t have a right to insist on financial support. 10 Even when we were with you we were giving you this command: “If anyone doesn’t want to work, they shouldn’t eat.” 11 We hear that some of you are living an undisciplined life. They aren’t working, but they are meddling in other people’s business. 12 By the Lord Jesus Christ, we command and encourage such people to work quietly and put their own food on the table.

Sounds very sensible. You wanna eat you gotta work. In fact, don’t even hang out with those lazy no workers. Certainly don’t feed em.

In our modern American context we say things like, “tell those lazy people to put on their work boots” or “pick yourself up by your bootstraps.” We call them Lazy, welfare queens, leeches on society. You know the rhetoric. You know the way that we think and feel about people who don’t work. It’s engrained in us as Americans, and this scripture from Paul vindicates us of having to look at this attitude any deeper. Look, Paul — an apostle of Jesus Christ, inspired by the Holy Spirit — says that lazy people don’t deserve our help! God, therefore, must not help lazy people. Hence, by the power of deductive reasoning, this must mean that God ONLY helps those who help themselves!!!

But we’ve got to come to a full stop here. First of all, the New Testament letters are something that we need to be very careful with. They are rich in information, but they are also one side of a conversation.

What we need to understand about Thessaloniki is that they were a church that was very concerned that they had somehow missed the return of Christ or that they were going to miss it. They are like the ancient version of some of our modern day sects of Christianity that are obsessed with “end times.” Like the original doomsday preppers. There is a lot of hysteria, and Paul is assuring them throughout both letters to remain calm and go on doing the work of Christ in the world.

So it seems that some people are “undisciplined.” The Greek literally reads “disruptive.” Paul never says they are lazy, but they are going about in a way that says “why strive, why work, the world is ending!” “Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die!” And Paul is like “no.” Stop acting this way and stop allowing these people to disrupt and distract you from doing the good work of the church.

So that’s the deal. Our bread and butter “God doesn’t like lazy people” text is not really about what we want it to be about. And that’s good, because a God who tells his people not to feed the hungry isn’t a God I’m going to follow with everything that I have.

Here’s the thing, we have taken our understanding of the world, our economic system, our work ethic and we have realized that it’s pretty darn good at what it’s meant to do. The Western/American system has produced massive progress, massive wealth, and massive power. And we see all of this good, and yes I believe that in a lot of ways our system has produced good, we see all of this good and we are like wow. God must really be blessing our 40 hour work week with 2 whole weeks of vacation a year. God must really be blessing how hard we work. Our absentee parentism and our stomach ulcers and our exhaustion. This must be the best way because LOOK AT US. WE ARE RICH.

And we take that false sense of what it means for God to bless us and we impose it on the text of 2 Thessalonians and then we impose it on God and we come up with a perfectly sensible saying like “God only helps those who help themselves” and all of a sudden we are comfortable. We are vindicated. Look: WE HAVE MADE GOD IN OUR IMAGE AND WE LIKE THIS GOD. This god limits my responsibility to the poor. This god says its ok to call single moms welfare queens. This god allows me to ignore my fellow humans because they aren’t helping themselves, and because they aren’t helping themselves, God aint helping them and if God aint helping them I’m gonna keep on driving. I’ll pray that they stop being lazy though. I think that sounds kind of Jesus-y.

But I’m going to fill you in on something. You know what God calls it when we make “god in our own image?” He calls it an idol. And one of God’s primary goals in the realm of humanity is to smash idols. And God has called me to be his hands and feet, and today that means smashing idols. So if your god tells you that it is ok to disregard or only help the poor if they are putting in a sufficient amount of effort to earn your help, then I’m putting your god on notice. They aren’t welcome in this place. And you should evict them from yours.

Reconstruction

Ok then. Now, let me introduce you to the God you made you in HIS image. And what he has to say about all of this. This is a reflection on God and God’s help and it comes from Psalm 121:

Common English Bible Psalm 121

1 I raise my eyes toward the mountains.

Where will my help come from?

2 My help comes from the LORD,

the maker of heaven and earth.

Notice, it doesn’t say “my help comes from me.” I doesn’t say my help comes from the LORD if I help myself.” No, it says My help comes from the LORD. From Yahweh, The God of Israel. The Maker of all that is seen and unseen. Of all that is above me, below me, around me. Surely if God can make all of this, the mountains that are vastly larger than me, surely this God can handle my problems without my help.

And here’s the thing, in Christianity we have a really great word that we use which describes God helping us. It’s the word grace. And grace, quite literally means “a gift.” And any good gift that we receive does not require us to like, pay for half of it right. Grace is free. God’s help is free. Check this out from Mark’s Gospel:

Common English Bible Chapter 5

5 Jesus and his disciples came to the other side of the lake, to the region of the Gerasenes. 2 As soon as Jesus got out of the boat, a man possessed by an evil spirit came out of the tombs. 3 This man lived among the tombs, and no one was ever strong enough to restrain him, even with a chain. 4 He had been secured many times with leg irons and chains, but he broke the chains and smashed the leg irons. No one was tough enough to control him. 5 Night and day in the tombs and the hills, he would howl and cut himself with stones. 6 When he saw Jesus from far away, he ran and knelt before him, 7 shouting, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won’t torture me!”

8 He said this because Jesus had already commanded him, “Unclean spirit, come out of the man!”

9 Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”

He responded, “Legion is my name, because we are many.” 10 They pleaded with Jesus not to send them out of that region.

11 A large herd of pigs was feeding on the hillside. 12 “Send us into the pigs!” they begged. “Let us go into the pigs!” 13 Jesus gave them permission, so the unclean spirits left the man and went into the pigs. Then the herd of about two thousand pigs rushed down the cliff into the lake and drowned.

14 Those who tended the pigs ran away and told the story in the city and in the countryside. People came to see what had happened. 15 They came to Jesus and saw the man who used to be demon-possessed. They saw the very man who had been filled with many demons sitting there fully dressed and completely sane, and they were filled with awe. 16 Those who had actually seen what had happened to the demon-possessed man told the others about the pigs. 17 Then they pleaded with Jesus to leave their region.

18 While he was climbing into the boat, the one who had been demon-possessed pleaded with Jesus to let him come along as one of his disciples. 19 But Jesus wouldn’t allow it. “Go home to your own people,” Jesus said, “and tell them what the Lord has done for you and how he has shown you mercy.” 20 The man went away and began to proclaim in the Ten Cities all that Jesus had done for him, and everyone was amazed.

I think that this is the perfect illustration. Just look at the flow of this story. Jesus shows up to this place where a demon possessed man lives and boom, he exorcises the demons. A whole legion of them. And the guy is fully restored. He looks normal again. Notice what never happened here. This guy did nothing to help himself. He didn’t even talk to Jesus — The demons talked to Jesus. Jesus healed this man, and he had done literally nothing to earn it and he did nothing that could even be remotely construed as helping. Jesus gave him a gift.

So that’s step one. Jesus helped the man. Now the second half, lets check out what the response is. The man wanted to follow Jesus. He wanted to do something with his life that had been taken from him by demon possession. So Jesus tells him what he can do to help himself. Go tell everyone about me. Show yourself and what God has done. By doing this, this guy, who is infamous for being crazy is now able to have a life if he just goes and presents himself to the people he grew up with.

Are you catching the flow of how this stuff works? So here is what I think. We need to rearrange this saying. Its not God only helps those who help themselves, its not even God helps those who help themselves. Rather what we need to do is change this all to “God helps us help ourselves.”

I’ve got a friend named Bobby, who I’ve known for about 9 years now. Bobby is an older fella, and he’s an old rock and roll drummer. That’s been his life since he was very young. When I met Mr. Bobby he was the drummer at the church that I started attending. After being around him for a while you get to hearing some stories. Stories about drumming, stories about some famous people he’d met and played with, stories about, well, just about everything.

But Mr. Bobby’s favorite story was about something that had happened to him not too long ago. See the rock and roll life started to catch up to him. I’m not sure how it all happened, but he had gotten pretty well addicted to pain medication, as a lot of folks did in the 2000s. And he would talk about how desperate he was to change. How desperate he was to be free from the mess and the sickness and the lying and the stealing and the cheating and all of the pain that trying to kill his pain had caused. But no matter what, he could not stop. He tried and failed more times than he could describe. No amount of willpower or outside influence from his kids, his wife, his bandmates and friends could get him off of the stuff for good. He would say “I just couldn’t help myself.”

Of course, if you’re listening to this story then you know that somehow Mr. Bobby ended up on the other side of this thing. So I asked him one day, I said Bobby man, what was it. What happened that made you stop. And he smiled, and he laughed. He said well one day I met Jesus.

I said, really you met Jesus? Like figuratively? You know I just kind of figured he meant that he had one of those old conversion experiences that some folks have. They can be quite powerful.

He said no man. I really met him. Face to face. At this point I’m pretty sure Mr. Bobby is a few eggs short of a dozen, but I went with it. And I said, oh really. Well what did he look like?

Bobby chuckled and he said “Well he was dressed like a Pinellas County Sheriff. And he took me to Jail.”

That was the last time Mr. Bobby ever used drugs. He found his help alright, and it didn’t come from within himself. When he could not be helped by himself, Jesus showed up… dressed like a Pinellas County Sheriff.

And that Sheriff got Bobby into a place that taught him how to live, how to help himself, and by nature of it all how to help other people who can’t help themselves.

Our situation as a whole is pretty similar to Mr. Bobby’s. Maybe not as extreme, but if we could help ourselves we surely would have done it by now. The whole story of the Bible is an account of humanity’s utter inability to help ourselves. That’s the whole reason that Jesus came. That’s the whole point of the cross. We could not and can not help ourselves without God’s help first.

I really hope that when you start to get frustrated with someone who just seems to be unwilling to help themselves that you will stop and think about the Man with the demons. That you’ll think about Mr. Bobby. God helps us help ourselves. But its not really for ourselves. God helps us help ourselves so that we can help others. The demon possessed man went and proclaimed the good news of Jesus. Bobby went on to help hundreds of people find a way to live without using drugs.

Who is God meaning for you to help? There’s someone on your mind right now. How are you going to help them help themselves? Will they one day say “I met Jesus and he was dressed as my neighbor, my friend, my teacher, or my parent?