To my dear friends and readers:
There is reason for my silence at the moment. My computer is in the shop to be rebuilt. Hopefully what I get back will be better and I'll be back to offering up more essays. I wish the best for those who read my posts.
Stanley Loper
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Friday, June 1, 2012
On Helping Others.
Today’s subject was requested
by a cousin on Facebook.
I encourage my readers to ask
for subjects to be covered though I reserve the right to decided which I
cover. He asked me to compose a lesson
on helping others. Since my daily
Facebook devotion is geared to a daily passage of the Bible to read I’m limited
with the daily devotion to whatever lessons may be found in the assigned
reading. However, I have the freedom and
flexibility here, so:
The question at hand provides
a perfect example of how the Christian may apply the Topical Method of Bible
study I use in my study of God’s word.
Although we, as Gentile Christians are not under the Law of Moses, as
the Apostles confirmed when the question was put before them in the first
century (See Acts 15:1-32 for the story and decision in context), that doesn’t
mean the Old Testament is irrelevant to us today. When writing the young man Timothy, Paul told
him that “all scripture” was beneficial for many things including as a guide
for life (2 Tim. 3:14-17). The scripture Paul was talking about was the
Torah, the only scriptures Christians had besides Matthew’s Gospel at the
time. So the wise Christian consults the
Old Testament as well on every subject to get a complete picture on which to
base doctrine, teaching, and life’s decisions.
The Patriarchs
We find a wealth of
information on the subject in the OT and I can but hit some highlights in our
consideration. In the age of the
Patriarchs we find the patriarchs were always ready to help others. When Abraham left Ur he took his father, Terah and his nephew, Lott with
him. He stopped off on his journey to
the land God commanded him to go in Haran, apparently because his father wasn’t up to the
journey and cared for him until his father died before continuing the journey
on to Canaan.
When he got to Canaan
he and his nephew had a parting of the ways.
Yet when Lott was captured in a war among the kings of Canaan Abraham
gathered his men and rushed to his nephews rescue without a thought as to the
circumstances under which they’d parted.
Thus Abraham laid his life on the line to help his nephew in his extreme
time of need. On the occasion of when Sodom and Gomorrah came under Judgment Lott saw the two angels of God
who were sitting in the square waiting under the dangerous situation of the
city and took them into his home, where he defended them from the mob that
wanted to abuse them.
As a side note, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah gets a little misunderstood. Check the story and you’ll find they weren’t
punished because they were homosexuals, in fact Lott’s daughters were engaged
to two of their number, and so many of them weren’t. My bet would be the number of homosexuals
among them was about the same as now, about 1-3%. But they were judged because they practiced
every evil and debauchery under the sun, as their conduct indicated when they
demanded the “men” who’d come under Lott’s roof that they could rape them. That, by the way is a time honored way of visiting
the ultimate contempt and abuse on a man in the orient and elsewhere, to rape
him as if he were nothing but a woman.
The story is found at Genesis 19:1-22.
We find an interesting story
where Sarah insists the son of Hagar, the son of Abraham’s slave and
technically his firstborn be sent away.
So Abraham does so under God’s permission. As you consider the story, note that Abraham
did give Hagar and Ishmael provisions, to help them under the circumstances. However, they ran out of provisions and come
near to death. But God steps in to help
the pair himself. So God himself set an
example for us as he not only saved the pair, but turned Ishmael into a mighty
nation (Gen. 21:1-21).
Israel
After God delivered Israel from their slavery in Egypt he made helping other a part of the law. In Exodus we find it codified in the law that
the Israelites were not to afflict destitute aliens, orphans or others in
destitute and desperate conditions (Ex. 22:22-27). God made provisions for the poor for when
they had to present mandated sacrifices at the temple to help them. They were allowed to bring animals of lesser
value than otherwise required (Lev. 4:11-13). In fact, when the days for purification were
completed in the case of our Lord’s birth and he was brought to the temple his
parents made use of that provision for the poor (Luke 2:22-24; Lev. 12). So God set the example for the people of Israel to follow in helping those less fortunate in their
midst.
But the law didn’t stop
there. It mandated positive provisions
for the poor. When reaping the grain on
their land during the harvest, the Israelites were commanded to leave the edges
of their land unharvested as a provision for the poor (Lev. 19:9), that command
also included a command to leave the gleaning, that is the overlooked sheaves
which fell or whatever, for the poor to pick up.. They were also commanded to leave the
leftovers from the harvest of the vineyards as well.
Those provisions provided an
opportunity for generosity on the part of individuals to help the poor and
destitute by leaving less of their land harvested or even deliberately leaving
behind gleanings for the poor in the main part of their fields. We find this custom not only mentioned in the
Book of Ruth, but Boaz commands his workers to leave behind gleaning
specifically with her in mind (Ruth 2).
In that story we see that some in ancient Israel were moved by the law to go beyond the mere commands
and act positively to help the destitute among them.
Christians
Now we get down to where the
rubber meets the road for us, the Christian era. Throughout his ministry Jesus urged people to
help those less fortunate than themselves.
He didn’t just tell people to, he reached out and did so himself. The stories of his healing people of their
infirmities are so numerous I won’t even attempt to list them here. But the healed people, raised the dead, and,
yes, helped people materially. How do we
know that?
Because we’re told that Jesus
and the disciples had a box they carried which contained money and that Judas
Iscariot was in charge of it (John 13:29).
It is implied in the telling of
the story where Mary anointed Jesus with costly oil that the money was also
used to help the poor and that Judas was stealing it from the box (John
12:4-6). So our Lord set the example and
taught his disciples to help those who needed it, materially if necessary.
We have the example carried
forward in the early Church where the earliest gathering of them lived together
and helped each other (Acts 4:32-37). In fact we’re told that there was no one in
need among them because of the generosity of their fellows (Acts 4:34). So from
early on Christians recognized a personal obligation to help others in everyway
they could. And James expounded on the
importance of helping others in his letter to his fellow Christians (James 2:14-17). But note
closely the last verse in my citation, James tells us that if we don’t help
those in need our faith is as dead as a corpse.
So what do we get out of all
of the evidence we’ve considered? Throughout
the ages men who truly loved God were ready to help those who in need. God set the example both in patriarchal times
but also for Israel. And that
Jesus set the example, which his disciples followed. Jesus did so willingly and liberally. That should be a clue for us. It’s not that we help people out of
compulsion, but as footstep followers of Jesus we do so because we want
to because our Lord and Master did.
True Christians help in ways
large and small, from mowing the grass of a shut in or and elderly person to reaching
into their own pockets to help family, friends, brethren, and even strangers.
I love to tell the story of a
commune of Shakers I read one time. They
discovered some of their crops were being stolen. Instead of going to the sheriff and insisting
he catch and punish the thieves they decided the thieves’ need must be greater
than their own. So the next year and
thereafter they planted more crops and had enough for their own needs even
after the pilfering was done. Can one
think of a more Christ-like attitude than that?
Part of the key to having
such an attitude is to remember that this world is passing away and we are but
temporary residents in it. Since
everything ultimately belongs to God, we are but stewards of whatever goods he
blesses us with and we are to use them to his good, much like the “dishonest”
manager in Jesus parable at Luke 16:1-13 did.
And that was the point of the Parable, to use our wealth in a way which
brings our heavenly father both glory and goodwill.
So we look for opportunities
to do good where we can and to the extent we can. Early Christians were known for that. True Christians still are.
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