Proverbs: The Poor

Intro:

This morning, we're diving into Proverbs to explore God's heart for the poor. This builds on last week's sermon on justice. We'll hear from community members dedicated to this work. Who are the poor? It's complex, encompassing food insecurity, homelessness, and material lack, as Michael Simmon from the Rescue Mission shared. While our nation has safety nets, biblical understanding goes deeper.

Scripture References: Proverbs 5:1-14, Proverbs 29:7, Proverbs 31:20, Proverbs 22:9, Proverbs 28:27, Proverbs 17:5, Proverbs 19:17, Matthew 25, Luke 4, 1 John 3:17-18, Galatians 2:9-10, Acts 3:1-9

Key Points:

• Poverty's Complex Causes: Proverbs acknowledges poverty results from both bad choices and injustice. Avoid instant judgment; it's a mix of personal decisions, family, and systemic issues.
• The Righteous Care for the Poor:
  • "The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern" (Proverbs 29:7).
  • The Proverbs 31 wife, epitomizing wisdom, "opens her arms to the poor" (Proverbs 31:20). Caring for the poor should be central to followers of Jesus.
• Rewards for Caring for the Poor:
  • "The generous will themselves be blessed" (Proverbs 22:9).
  • "Those who give to the poor will lack nothing, but those who close their eyes to them receive many curses" (Proverbs 28:27). There's eternal reward and divine warning.
• God Identifies with the Poor:
  • "Whoever mocks the poor shows contempt for their Maker" (Proverbs 17:5).
  • "Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord" (Proverbs 19:17).
  • Matthew 25 highlights: "Whatever you did for one of the least of these... you did for me." God takes our actions personally.
• A Holistic Gospel:
  • Our gospel must be good news to the poor. Jesus' mission began with proclaiming good news to the poor (Luke 4:18).
  • Avoid two errors:
    1. Serving the poor while neglecting Jesus/discipleship: Without Jesus, healing from deep pain is incomplete (Heidi Heredia).
    2. Preaching the gospel but neglecting the poor: "How can the love of God be in that person?" (1 John 3:17). Our gospel needs "feet"—actions. The early church was known for this care.
• Helping Without Hurting:
  • Avoid increasing shame/savior complex: Don't disempower. Use asset-based community development (Steve Corbett) – resource their gifts to restore dignity (e.g., Creekside Community Church selling gifts).
  • Avoid "parachuting": Partner with indigenous ministries. Building relationships and local ownership are key (Dave Schlich). Jesus is already at work; we join Him.
  • Avoid giving relief to those who need development: Understand relief (immediate aid), rehabilitation (getting out of the pit), development (learning to walk again). Our goal is full restoration.
  • Panhandling: Michael Simmon advises against cash. Offer connection, food/hygiene items. "Being seen" is vital.
  • The goal: restore full humanness, glorifying God in right relationship with Him, self, others, and creation.

Conclusion:

Many are helping without hurting (Rescue Mission, Gleanings, Dream Center). We're called to embody this holistic gospel.

Call to Action:

Remember Acts 3:1-9: Peter and John gave the lame man healing in Jesus' name, not just money. We empower people to "walk, jump, and praise God." Ask God for your part and pray for those leading this work.

Transcript

Hey, as Glenn comes, we're gonna pray for him as he teaches this morning. And I wanted to mention that Travis is actually up in Tacoma, Washington, covering for a pastor on sabbatical. So he's preaching up there, and he's actually gonna be teaching at their new day next week. So our new day is not unique. Every church in our family of churches has new days during the summer. So Travis is up there this week ministering to them. So as you think of him, pray for him this morning. Hey, would you join me as I pray for Glenn?

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Lord, thank you for Glenn and just the gift that he is to us. Lord, thank you for the deposit that you've put in his heart today. And Lord, we just receive it ahead of time. And I just pray for your spirit to move and to speak through him. And Lord, we just thank you for what you have for us to hear. And we just say that we're gonna hear it and put it into practice. So bless Glenn today in your name, amen.

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Awesome, thanks, Danny.

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Well, excuse me. Well, you guys know we are in the book of Proverbs this summer. So my topic today is God's heart for the poor from the book of Proverbs. So this is gonna kind of dovetail with what Matt shared last Sunday a little bit.

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And actually along the way in this message, we're gonna get to hear from a few people in our community who have given their lives to this. So we'll get to hear some other voices besides mine on a video. So that'll be fun.

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As I was thinking about this, I was asking the question,

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you know, there's so many, there's actually so many verses in the book of Proverbs about the poor

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and the whole Bible. I mean, it's Genesis to Revelation, but especially in the book of Proverbs. But I started to ask,(...) who are the poor? Who are we talking about? I think we have different images in our mind, maybe the poor kid in Africa,

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maybe the homeless into Larry County.

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I was thinking about my own childhood(...) and I had kind of an interesting dual existence as a child because my family was pretty poor, as far as the first world goes anyway,

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but my parents actually bartered away for me and my brothers to go to a private school. So on the one hand, we often didn't have enough food and our church actually donated food several times so we could have enough before the end of the month. And we were drinking powdered milk in the morning with our cereal.(...) Is that still a thing, powdered milk?

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And then on the other hand, like most of my friends

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had big houses and pools. And so it just, I think we felt more poor than we really were, because we were always looking around like, oh my gosh, why our friends have all this stuff? So was I poor when I grew up? I'm asking these kind of questions.

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Compassion International has this definition that I thought was kind of helpful. They say on their website,

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although there are a few exceptions, the term poor in scripture means economic or material poverty, but the circumstances and causes associated with that condition are complex. And I thought that was helpful because sometimes we can over spiritualize it in the Bible, like, yeah, the poor are the spiritually poor. And it's like, yes, that's true. And there are a few verses that say that, but it's also the people who are actually poor and don't have stuff or food.

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So I got a chance to interview Michael Simmon this week from the Rescue Mission. And we had an awesome conversation, 26 minutes of gold, and that's actually available on Radiance YouTube account as of this morning. So I'm gonna show a couple short clips this morning,

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but I encourage you guys to listen to the whole thing. So I asked him the same question, like who are the poor in Visalia?

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So in a city like Visalia, I really think that a really first indicator is somebody who's facing food insecurity, right? And so that could be somebody who has a home, maybe they're in an apartment or a house or something like that. But if they've got kids, maybe if they're skipping meals so that their kids don't have to or if their kids are skipping meals because they don't have an option, that's a pretty good indicator and that I'm certain that that exists here in Visalia.(...) Clearly, there's a homeless

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issue, you know, that there are a good number of people in Visalia that are experiencing homelessness at what Taliri County more broadly. Yeah,(...) I mean those are those are probably the biggest pictures of what poverty in Visalia looks like.

(...) Yeah, I thought that was super helpful.

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So maybe if our car doesn't have AC, we may feel poor, but that's not exactly the same thing as not knowing if we're gonna have another meal. And in fact, we should say too that this came up in our conversation.

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Again, there is a distinction between Visalia poor and Third World poor. And the reason is because in our country, we have a lot of safety nets for the poor. We have a lot of programs.

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We have a lot of social services. Now, are they perfect? No. And do people fall through the cracks? Yes, for sure. But we do have these safety nets. And so as a kid, even though I was embarrassed to stand in the reduced lunch line, you get my lunch for 40 cents,

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I wasn't actually wondering like, am I gonna eat today? I knew I was gonna eat. I just didn't wanna stand in that embarrassing lunch line. And so I think that that's helpful to know.

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So let's look at what Proverbs says about God's heart for the poor. And this is probably gonna be, it's just gonna be a short little section, but this is probably the most valuable section of my sermon today. We're gonna go through a few scriptures.

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And I'm gonna categorize them in four different principles that Proverbs teaches. And the first one is something that Matt covered last week. So I'm gonna go through it real fast. But Proverbs teaches that poverty is the result of both bad choices and injustice.

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And I'm just gonna put a couple different scriptures up on the screen there. And I'm not gonna go through them again because Matt covered this last week. But I just wanted to review that because I think sometimes we can get,(...) sometimes depending on what church we go to or even what end of the political spectrum we're on, we can get stuck in one or the other. Like every poor person, it's because they're lazy and addicted to drugs. That's one end of the spectrum. Or the other end of the spectrum is,(...) it's the system, it's the system, and they really have had no partner whatsoever. But the Bible teaches that both are true and it's actually very complex.(...) And so that's a good reason we don't wanna instantly judge somebody who is in poverty. Because we don't know exactly how they got there. It's a complex mix of sometimes choices and the family they grew up in and the system that they're a part of. Okay, so let's go on to the next one though.(...) The next thing that Proverbs teaches(...) is that the righteous care for the poor.

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Proverbs 29 verse seven says this, "The righteous care about justice for the poor, "but the wicked have no such concern."(...) And then Proverbs 31,(...) so this is that passage talking about the Proverbs 31 wife. And if you remember a couple weeks ago, I said that that passage is meant to be the epitome of the wisdom of the book of Proverbs. So 31 chapters of wisdom culminates in this Proverbs 31 wife, and one of her characteristics(...) is she opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy. And so the point is, if you're a follower of Jesus, if you are counted among the righteous, this should be on your radar. Those who have less, the poor, this should be something on your mind. This should be something that comes up in your prayers.

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Okay, the next principle that Proverbs teaches is that there's a reward for caring for the poor.

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22 verse nine says, "The generous will themselves be blessed "for they share their food with the poor."

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I love that, that's so practical too. They share their food with the poor. And then secondly, it says, "Those who give to the poor will lack nothing, "but those who close their eyes to them "receive many curses."(...) So this is a little bit sobering too. On the one hand,(...) if this is on our mind and we're giving and praying and serving the poor, then there are promises that God's gonna take care of you and that there's an eternal reward. On the other hand, there are warnings about, again, I love the imagery, those who close their eyes. And it's so easy to do that. For the people who have less, it makes us uncomfortable. We don't wanna look at it. We don't wanna hear about it. And so we close our eyes. Nah, I just wanna stay. I got enough problems. I just wanna stay in my own little world. And the Bible warns against that.

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Last principle that I'm gonna talk about is number four, Proverbs teaches that God personally identifies with the poor and avenges their injustice. So this is probably the most serious of the four principles, is that God himself stands in the place of the poor. So Proverbs 17, five says it this way,(...) "Whoever mocks the poor shows contempt for their maker. "Whoever gloats over disaster will not go unpunished."

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And then the next one, "Whoever is kind to the poor "lends to the Lord."(...) So what you do for those who are suffering, for those who do not have, God takes it personally as if it was himself. I mean, can you imagine that? The person who is just simply, he just says kind.(...) Give something simple, a conversation, a cup of cold water, God in heaven goes, "Thank you for lending to me. "Thank you for that. "I appreciate that."

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And of course, this probably brings to mind a more famous passage from Matthew 25, and I'll read that.

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And this is a picture at the judgment seat,(...) where every single one of us will go at the end of our life, we will stand before Jesus and have a conversation, something like this.(...) And this little excerpt says, "Then the righteous will answer him, "'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, "'or thirsty and give you something to drink?' "The king will reply, "'Truly I tell you, whatever you did "'for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, "'you did for me.'"

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Man, that is so encouraging and sobering that we're gonna stand before Jesus, and whatever small act of kindness we showed for those who are suffering, he's gonna go, "Man, thank you for doing that for me." And we'll be like, "Wait, I didn't, "what are you talking about?" He's like, "No, it was like you did it for me. "Thank you for that."(...) This is powerful.

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If you remember a couple weeks ago, I talked about the quality of our gospel, in relation to the message on lust and addiction.(...) And I said our gospel needs to be more than just a gospel of forgiveness and a thousand second chances. It is helpful and as powerful and true as that is. It needs to be more than that. It needs to be a kingdom gospel that transforms us from the inside out. I wanna add to that,

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and I wanna say that our gospel needs to be that good,

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and it needs to be that big, but our gospel also needs to be wide. It needs to be holistic. And this is what I mean.

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Our gospel shouldn't just be something that comes to us in our own hearts and affects our own eternity,(...) but our gospel should affect the poor and hurting people around us in our city.

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Just to ask it another way,

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is your gospel good news to the poor in your city?(...) Because if it's not, it's not the biblical gospel.

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And the reason I know this is because Jesus, when he came to the earth, he gave us a mission statement in Luke four. And this was the first line of his mission statement. He said this, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me "because he has anointed me "to proclaim good news to the poor."

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Our gospel needs to be good news to the poor. Now, I think we can err in a couple different ways, and one way that we can err, and again, it depends on kind of what church you grew up in, or again, sometimes there are relationships to what side of the political aisle you're on, sometimes, sometimes not, but sometimes the error we can commit is we can say yes to this call to care for the poor, and then our whole church and ministry can be about serving the poor, feeding, loving them, but then we slowly push the message of Jesus to the side,

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and we start to water down the gospel itself.

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And that's an error. That's not the full gospel.(...) I wanna show another clip right now of my friend, Heidi Heredia, and she gives her life to serving the unhoused in Teleri, as she would call it. And I asked her the question, actually, well, it's on the video, so let's play that.

What would you say is the number one thing that, you know, you worked with, um, you work with unhoused young adults in, in Tulare. What's, what's the number one thing they need?

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They need Jesus and they need a lot of love. That's a good answer. They,(...) and it sounds like cliche, but it's actually true. Um,(...) if I think about my own life and my own teenage years, um, when I was a teenager, I had a beautiful Christian family, but I became addicted to drugs.

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And only Jesus, only an encounter with the love of God, um, was able to set me free. And the love that I had from my parents was absolutely amazing. Like they were so supportive. They prayed night and day. They would have moments with me when I was in a rage and just looked into my eyes and said, no matter what you do, we will always love you. And, um, all of my, uh, young adults that I work with and every individual that I've met, um, that are living on the streets did not have that.

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And so, and I want to address your previous question about addiction. Addiction is very, very much a part of their lives. Um, but no little child when they're six years old, if you ask them, like, what do you want to be when you grow up? No one says I want to be a meth addict. Like I want to be a heroin addict when I grow up. Like that sounds fun. Yeah.(...) No one, no one says that or wants that. Um, it's a form of coping with deep level pain and trauma and mental illness. Um, and that's why we all do things that we wish that we didn't.(...) Was cause we have pain that only Jesus can heal only Jesus and, um, healed relationship with God, with ourselves and with others. Like without that healing, then people get stuck.

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I love that.

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So maybe your gospel is very justice oriented, and that's powerful and good, but we can't leave out the central aspect of the gospel itself, the message of Jesus, and discipleship.

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There is another error on the other side of the spectrum though, and I would imagine that this is more of a temptation for a church-like radiant, and that's to preach the gospel and teach the Bible and to have a heart for discipleship, but to neglect the poor and the needy altogether.

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And the Bible speaks into this directly.(...) First John says this, "If anyone has material possessions(...) "and sees a brother or sister in need, "but has no pity on them, "how can the love of God be in that person? "Dear children, let us not love with words or speech, "but with actions and truth." Again, how wide or holistic is your gospel? Does it have feet to it? Does it involve actually helping people? Feeding, giving cups of cold water, serving, or is it just a lot of good and true words?(...) We need to have the whole gospel.

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Paul preached the whole gospel, which I'm sure is no surprise, but in Galatians, he actually meets with all the other founding apostles, which was like a big-time meeting, all the big wigs of the early church. And the first thing they talk about is the gospel. They say, "Paul, okay, you're gonna go to the Gentiles. "Peter, you're gonna go to the Jews." They make that clear. But then before they end this historic meeting,(...) there's one thing that they talk about, and it says this, "All they asked, the other apostles, "was that we should continue to remember the poor, "the very thing I had been eager to do all along." So they agree, as this gospel goes to the nations of the earth, don't forget the poor, or it's not the whole thing. It's not the full thing. And in fact, the early church did such a good job of this that they were known for the first three or four centuries for taking care of not just their poor, but the whole Roman empires' poor. And the reason we know this is we have this really funny quote from this guy named Emperor Julian.

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And he's writing to a pagan priest, and he's annoyed at the Christians of his day because they're making them look bad, because they're being so kind, and they're taking care of so many poor people, that it's making all of the pagan priests and himself look really bad. And so this is what he said. He said,(...) "When it came about that the poor were neglected "and overlooked by the pagan priests, "then I think the impious Galileans," the Christians, "observed this fact and devoted themselves to philanthropy. "They support not only their poor, but ours as well. "All men see that our people lack aid from us."

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You know what else makes this awesome? Was that this is the last unbelieving Roman emperor,(...) that Christianity so pervaded the Roman empire that every emperor after him was Christian.

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And part of it was their care for the poor.(...) Okay, I know as we talk about this, questions come up because they came up for me. And maybe if I preached this message when I was 24, I would have just kind of ended on a note like this, like, "Come on, let's go do it. "Let's go out and serve the poor, the end, pray."(...) But now I'm in my 40s and I look back at, my friends and I did help serve and care for the poor in different ways throughout our 20s and a little bit our 30s. And I found that some of the things we did, I'm really proud of. And then other things we did, I look back and I go, "I don't know if that was really helping people."

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And so I wanna ask this question, when we serve the poor, are we helping them or are we hurting them?(...) And I wanna give, what is it, three ways that we can actually hurt the poor,(...) even though we have good intentions.(...) And let me start with a story.

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And I hope this story is as painful for you as it was for me. This is in Steve Corbett's book

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that I'll refer to a little bit later. But he talks about a church called(...) Creekside Community Church. It's not the real name, so don't Google it.

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Creekside Community Church was full of urban professionals,

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mostly white, and they began to get inspired to help the poor. Probably heard some of these same verses that we talked about this morning.(...) And so they knew about a housing complex,

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some slums really, that were close to their church that were mostly black. And they decided, "Let's go help them. "Let's give them Christmas presents. "This is gonna be awesome." And so they got together a group of people, some volunteers, and they went singing carols and presenting Christmas presents to the kids of these houses. And it was a little awkward at first, but as they went on, the kids would get these big smiles on their faces, and they were so excited to receive these presents. And so after going through this housing complex, the church was on a high. They were like, "Man, we're doing it, you know? "This is awesome." Those kids were so stoked to get presents.

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So they were so excited that they expanded their initiative to include baskets of candy at Easter, turkeys at Thanksgiving, and they continued to give presents at Christmas.

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A few years go by, and less and less volunteers are signing up for it, and the pastor's confused, like, "Hey, what's going on? "We were so excited a few years ago about this." So he calls a meeting and he says, "What's wrong? "How come nobody wants to volunteer to do this anymore?"

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And they share with them, they say,(...) "Well, we've noticed that these poor people were helping.(...) "They're still poor after four or five years. "Like, we've been helping them out, "giving them food and support, "and really nothing's changed. "They're just as poor as they were five years ago."(...) And that's sort of irritating, like, you know, "Shouldn't you be helping yourself out a little bit?"(...) And they said, "And also, we noticed that when we go "to these houses, it's always like a single mom with kids. "We've also noticed they keep on having more kids." And it's like, "What's the deal? "Do they just want to get more welfare benefits or something? "Like, come on, where are all the men?"

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So they had some conversations, they did some investigation, and it turns out that most of those families did have fathers, but those fathers were so embarrassed that the church would come and give presents to their children when they themselves couldn't afford to give their own kids presents that they would either hide in the back room or they would run out the back doors.

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And it got to a point where they hated it every time. Creekside Community Church would come around because the shame they already felt as poor people was getting worse and heavier and deeper.

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It's painful because I could see myself in that church like, "This is such a good idea."

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And then we realized that we're actually increasing the shame that the poor already feel, and in some ways we're increasing the pride that we already had as the middle-class Christians in the city.

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And so the first way that we hurt is what I just said, we increase the shame of the poor,

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and we increase the savior complex of the wealthy. It is the most natural thing for those who are middle-class or higher to start to develop a savior or a God complex when they help the poor, like, "Here we are to rescue you, da-da-da-da."

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And it just increases this rift between the two.

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What's a solution? One of the solutions is something that Steve Corbett in his book calls, it's a little bit wordy, so bear with me, asset-based community resources,(...) sorry, asset-based community development, and this is what he says about it, and I'll put it in more simple language. But he says, "Instead of looking outside "the low-income individual or community for resources "and solutions,(...) ABCD starts by asking the material poor "how they can be stewards of their own gifts and resources, "seeking to restore individuals and communities "to being what God has created them. "Indeed, the very nature of the question, "what gifts do you have, affirms people's dignity "and contributes to the process "of overcoming their poverty of being." And so this kind of development, it goes into these kind of territories and demographics and it says, "Hey, what are you guys good at? "Oh, you're good at cooking? "Cool,(...) what resources can I give you "to increase your cooking ministry(...) "so you can feed the rest of your neighborhood?" And so then when we've got so-and-so cooking for her neighborhood and feeding them and we're resourcing her, now the attention goes to her and her dignity and self-respect is increasing because she's the one doing it. And so this is what it means to do asset-based community development.

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If you wanna know what happened to Creekside Community Church, they ended up altering their plan and they ended up selling Christmas presents to the families at reduced prices.(...) So then that way the parents themselves could give the Christmas presents to their kids and their kids would say, "Thank you, Mommy. "Thank you, Daddy." But the church was still able to help and see how that subtle change can make all the difference and now you're dignifying and helping people?

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This is why this is important. Okay, the second way that we can hurt instead of helping is we can hurt by parachuting into majority world countries without submitting to indigenous ministries.

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And what I mean by that is the local church is there. It's the easiest thing in the world to show up in Kenya and we bring our food and money and we start doling out the food and the money and everyone's like, "Oh my gosh, these white Americans, "we love them." And then we leave and they're the same or worse off than before. We really did nothing to help them.

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But if we go in and partner with the churches and ministries there that actually know how to serve that population the most effectively, then we can make a long lasting change.

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So I wanna show one more video from our very own Dave Schlich who talks about this a little bit.

Hi, this is Dave Schlick. Sam and I have been leading trips down to Mexico for 27 years and over those years we've learned a lot about working with the poor. I've also had experience working with homeless people. But one thing that I learned was on a trip seven years into leading Mexico mission trips, we were trying to be really aggressive and build three homes that year.(...) And we knew that the team we had it was going to be hard to finish those houses and we got really caught up in building and really didn't spend much time with the people of Mexico.(...) And about the third day of the trip, Sam said, "The pastor's wife really wants you to come see some people and meet some people she's been working with that are out in the country." And I said, "We don't have time. We need to finish these houses." She goes, "Dave, you need to make a priority. You need to get there." And I'm like, "No, we won't finish the houses." And finally, Sam just said, "You have to do it. Come."(...) And we went and we went out and we met the people and it was life changing. The people there were mixed echo. They had bellies like in Africa.

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And we were so caught up in just trying to build things to help a few people that we were missing the bigger picture.

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And from that, we realized that without building relationships, there's no mission going on. You can build all kinds of things, but if you don't build relationships, you've missed out on the most important part of sharing why you're there.(...) And so now when we go down to build houses,(...) we do build a house. But before we ever get there, we have the people buy the land themselves and they take ownership in it. They make payments every month for several years. And then once they own their land, then we come in and we build the house for them. But we don't just build it. We have the owners help build it. So the first day, they're painting with us. Then the man of the house is building and doing as much as he can throughout the build. And at the end, the family usually makes a big meal for us and to thank us.

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We always have people that are tempted to try to give them money to thank them for making this meal. But then that robs them of their dignity and the sense of giving back to us. And so our main goal is to try to get buy-in and also to try to make sure that we don't destroy the dignity that they have by just doing everything ourselves. We want to empower them. And one final step that we've been doing lately is we leave them paint and paintbrush so that they can do the final painting of the interior of their house. And then they feel like they've really accomplished something when they're done. And it kind of spurs them on to continue adding on to their house and improving it. And so we put a lot of thought into how can we help people without actually hurting them and paralyzing them and making them feel more hopeless than they really are. Because we want to leave them feeling hopeful in a God that loves them and cares about them. And that's the most important thing that we can do as short-term missionaries.

Love it.(...) And you notice some of these themes emerging from the people who do this for a living is that relationship is everything. It's not just money. They need communities and supportive relationships. And that's part of how people climb out of their poverty. One other principle before we go to the next one is that when we go to these poorer populations, whether it's locally or overseas,

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it's important to say that we're not bringing Jesus to these communities.

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Jesus is already at work in these communities and sometimes in ways that are deeper and more powerful than we've ever experienced. So when we go overseas or go locally to help, we're trying to get eyes to see what Jesus is already doing so we can partner with it. It's a very important shift. OK, the last way that we can hurt

(...)

is by bringing relief to people who need development. So let me explain that. There are three terms, again, that Steve Corbett uses in his book, When Helping Hurts, relief,(...) rehabilitation, and development. And relief is like stopping the bleeding.(...) That's like giving money or giving a meal. And there's a really important place for relief.

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Relief is like somebody who's trapped in a pit and they're about to starve to death and you throw food down into the pit. Like, I don't want you to die. Here's some food. But they're still in the pit.

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Rehabilitation is bringing them up out of the pit. And then development is teaching that person how to walk again when they've been stuck in a pit for years or maybe even their whole life and they forgot how to use their legs. One of the ways that we hurt the most is we just dole out relief, money, food, whatever it is, without actually thinking of ways to develop or disciple the people.

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OK. So this brings up an important question.(...) What about the guy with the cardboard sign?(...) What do I do?(...) Do I give him money? Do I give him food? I want to know. So I asked Michael Simmons. This was one of my questions that I asked him. So this is his answer.

Here's generally what we know about the population of folks who are panhandling,

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is that they are probably, the chances are very good that they're struggling with some sort of substance abuse or some sort of an addiction. And so I would personally not recommend giving them money. Instead, if you want to buy food for them or provide hygiene items for them, I think like we were talking about a little bit earlier, like what that person needs is connection. And so being willing to just go, "Hey, how's it going? What's your name? My name's Michael. Hey man, are you hungry? Can I go buy you a burger?(...) Would that be okay?"(...) And just engaging with them in that way because look,(...) the reality is that person's probably been ignored by a thousand people that day. And being seen is really important, right? And connecting. You know, it's in so many other spaces in our world, we use phrases like, "You gotta earn the right to be heard."

I wanted to get practical this morning. That's why I'm asking some of these harder questions. They're questions that I've struggled with.

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I want to share this quote, kind of end this section here.(...) Last quote from this Steve Corbett book. But he says, "The goal is not to make the material poor all over the world into middle to upper class North Americans."

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That's so funny, because that's kind of subtly what we think.(...) Yes, we're going to make them like us,(...) a group characterized by high rates of divorce, sexual addiction, substance abuse, and mental illness.(...) It's like, oh, maybe we don't want them to be exactly like us. We're a little bit jacked up.

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Rather, the goal is to restore people to a full expression of humanness, to being what God created us all to be, people who glorify God by living in right relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the rest of creation.

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I love that.

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So there are so many examples of people who are helping without hurting. That's why I wanted to put up people like Michael Semen, Heidi Heredia. Again, those full interviews are available on our YouTube.

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Dave Schlich, we watched the whole video.

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I got to learn more about the Rescue Mission as I talked to Michael. I think they should have an info card that's out on the desk, actually, if you want to learn more. We love the Rescue Mission around here. Another ministry that we love. And I don't have time to mention all of the ministries that we love, because there's so many. There's so many just in Tulare County alone. So please forgive me if I'm not mentioning yours or one that you're related to. But another one that we love is Gleanings for the Hungry.

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I was just there on Thursday. And these are top quality people who are preaching a holistic gospel. Jesus discipleship also with hands and feet that help the poor and the needy. And we're actually going to have a serve day if you're looking for like, man, I just want to do something soon. We're actually going to have a serve day where we take the church to Gleanings and help out for a day. And that's on August 6, 815. We'll meet here at the church. And then we'll head on over there together. And we'll be back around 5.30. So that's something helpful and soon that you could do.

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I want to end with a scripture.

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You know, one other ministry I'll just mention real quick that's non-local is the Dream Center in LA.

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Powerful example of everything that we've been talking about this morning. I mean, I would gladly give money to what they're doing. If you want to know more about them, I actually just heard an interview on the Allie Beth Stuckey podcast. She interviews Matthew Barnett, the founder of the Dream Center. And it's an hour of just like inspiration,(...) amazing stories of people who were addicted and begging for 20 years. And then they went through the Dream Center program. And the first thing they ask at the Dream Center to everyone is, what is your dream? Because again, this is more about-- this is more than just money and food. This is about restoring people to their God-given callings. And they base everything around pushing people towards their dream.

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But panhandlers who are now gospel preachers, like just some cool stuff.

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OK, I want to end with this passage in Acts.

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It says one day-- and a worship team, you guys can go and come on up here.

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One day, Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer at 3 in the afternoon. Now a man who was lame from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money.

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Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter said, look at us.(...) Did you notice that almost everyone I talked to today on the interviews mentioned something about relationship and connection? And you see that happening here? He goes, hey, look at us. We're going to connect with you on a relational level. That's so healing and dignifying to the soul.

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He goes on,(...) and the man gave him his attention, expecting to get something from them. And Peter said, silver or gold, I do not have, but what I do have, I give you. And I just wanted to highlight that, too.(...) Our call is not to solve systemic poverty. That's not our call. Our call is to do something, to give something of what we have-- prayer, relationship, love, maybe money, maybe food. But what we have, we give what we have.(...) In this case,(...) Peter prayed for a miraculous healing. I mean, that's a pretty good one to give, huh?

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He says, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk. Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up. And again, think of that picture as a metaphor, not just throwing money or food at somebody, but helping them up out of where they are, giving them the support and resources that they need to get up.

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Instantly, the man's feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping and praising God. And we're just going to end with that.(...) Again, I'm so thankful for government programs, but the most that government programs can do is help somebody to walk again in that sense. They can help them materially. They can help them physically.

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But the lame man in this passage was also jumping and praising God.(...) Only the church can cause the poor to walk, jump, and praise God. We've been entrusted with the gospel and the message of Jesus and resources to help. And this is what it looks like, somebody who used to be on the side of the road, destitute and hopeless, and now they're walking and jumping and praising God again. And so I'm just going to pray for that. God, we say yes to that.

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Would you show us our part in all of this?

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And we pray grace and power to those who are giving their lives to this. Would you give fresh resources and encouragement to them today so they can lead the way? In your name, Jesus, amen.