God Helps Those Who Help Themselves - Half-Truths

Transcript of the sermon preached by Pastor Shawn Coons on May 14, 2023

So here we are on our second week of our Half Truths series, where we look at sayings commonly associated with Christianity and said by well-meaning Christians. But sometimes when we look closer at these sayings, we find that they may not be as true as we think they may be. Last week we talked about "Everything happens for a reason," and this morning we're moving on to "God helps those who help themselves." Now, there was a survey done by the Barna Group and they asked a whole bunch of people, "Is 'God helps those who help themselves' found in the Bible?" And 8 in 10 Americans said, "Yes. We're pretty sure that's found in the Bible." Half the people in that survey were very strongly convinced that this was a strong, major message found in scripture.

When we do a little bit of historical research, we find that this saying or similar sayings actually predate much of scripture and can be traced back to Greece and some Greek mythology five centuries before Jesus. God helps those who help themselves has been said a number of different ways throughout history. Probably the most famous that we know is by Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard's Almanac. And I would guess a number of us here have probably said it at one point or another, and often what we mean by it is, well, you can't just sit back. You can't just be lazy. You can't just do nothing and expect that God's going to take care of everything for you. If you want a job, then put together a resume. Get out there and look for a job. Don't just hang out at home, pray for a job, then hope the phone will ring. Or I guess nowadays your email will buzz with that job offer. God helps those who help themselves.

When we mean this, we sometimes mean don't offer prayers to God for something unless you are willing to put forth your effort for it as well. Maybe sometimes we'll say God answers prayers like that, but sometimes God's answer to prayer is, "I've given you everything you need to accomplish this. Go out there. You have the brains, you have the strength, you have the resources to get it, so go for it." There is this saying that I came across on Facebook one day. "I dreamed I was face to face with God, and so I asked God, 'There's so much suffering in the world, so much poverty, so much violence, racism and sexism. People are treating each other so horribly. God, why don't you do something about it?' And then God looked at me and said, 'That's interesting. I was just about to ask you the same thing.'"

Adam Hamilton, in his book, Half-Truths, which this series is based on, he writes this. "We don't sit around waiting for God simply to miraculously write the wrongs in society. Scripture reveals over and over again, God works through people. We are the instruments God uses to change the world." Our times of prayer are meant to empower us and guide us into action. Those who fought for civil rights did not simply show up at church and pray. They prayed and then marched, knowing they were likely to be beaten and arrested, but that God would somehow see them through.

Okay, that makes, I think, a lot of sense. But what about the people who seem incapable of helping themselves, who seem for any number of reasons helpless to get out of a situation? What about someone trapped in circumstances that have gotten out of control? Will God help them? Well, just a moment ago, Randy read from Psalm 18, he read, "The cords of death encompass me. The torrents of perdition assail me. The cords of Sheol entangled me. The snares of death confronted me." That sounds to me like someone unable to help themselves. So what does God do? What does God say? "Well, it was your choices that got you there. You'll have to figure out how to get yourself out."

No, it says God reaches down from on high. It says, "God delivered me for my strong enemy." God delivered me. Think about that language. God delivered me. When I think of deliveries these days, I think of the UPS driver. The package gets delivered. The package doesn't contribute any help to the delivery guy. The package doesn't lift itself. The package is passive. So when we say God delivers us, that's not "Okay, we did our part. Now God's going to do God's part." That means God does the delivering. God does the rescuing. God does the saving.

Let's turn to the gospels for a second lesson this morning and we will look at it in this lens of does Jesus only help those who help themselves? And we'll be reading from Mark chapter five, starting with verse one. "They came to the other side of the lake to the country of the Gerasenes, and when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. He lived among the tombs and no one could restrain him anymore, even with a chain, for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart. The shackles he broke in pieces, and no one had the strength to subdue him.

Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him and he shouted at the top of his voice, 'What are you to do with me, Jesus, son of the most high God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.' For Jesus had said to him, 'come out of the man you unclean spirits.' "Then Jesus asked him, 'What is your name?' And he replied, 'My name is Legion for we are many,' and he begged him earnestly not to send them out of him. 'Send us into the swine, let us enter them.' So Jesus gave them permission and the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine and the herd numbering about 2000, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned in the lake." This is the word of God.

The word of God.

There's a number of things going on in this passage. I would be remiss if I didn't point out this was the first known known instance of deviled pork. Sorry, I know it's Father's Day, a little dad joke for you. No, we've got a guy here. He's in the grips of these demonic forces. He is trapped by forces beyond his control. He is trapped by forces beyond other people's control, as the passage says. They're making him do strange things. They're making him do destructive things. They're making him hurt himself, things that no one in their right mind would do by choice. Here is a man in need of help and he cannot help him himself.

We might talk about these kind of forces differently. We're probably not going to talk about demons in supernatural possession, but there are forces that people are in the grip of that are beyond their control. People trapped in poverty, in situations of war and violence and famine, racism and sexism. And while we may admit that people mired in their circumstances too deep to get out on their own, sometimes we want to nuance that just a little bit. And we don't quite say, "Well, God helps those who help themselves," but we say a little bit of a different version of it. "God helps those who don't get into that kind of trouble in the first place." We go beyond saying, "Well, use what God has given you to help yourself," and we move on to labeling.

We move on to judging. We move on to implying that there are people out there, yes, maybe they can't help themselves, but they had a chance to and they didn't choose it. And so they got themselves into this situation and maybe they don't quite deserve God's help as much as we think. So sometimes when we say, "God helps those who help themselves," we mean "Well, you made your bed and now you have to lie in it. You made some bad decisions. Maybe you deserve some consequences for your actions."

We see someone on the street corner asking for money, and we question whether they truly deserve our help or God's help, because surely they could have done something to get themselves there. Surely they could have went out and looked for work that day instead of standing on the street corner. Maybe they chose to do drugs. Maybe they didn't work hard enough, maybe they spent recklessly. If we think about this a little bit, it's probably somewhere at the heart of this is a desire for fairness. We want life to be fair. We want God to be fair. We don't want someone getting something they don't deserve, especially if it seems to be at our expense. We want people who do good things, who make good choices, to get good results. We want people who do bad things, who make bad choices, to get bad results.

To borrow from another faith. We want this sort of karma. And is it bad to want that? Is it bad to want fairness? Is it bad to want God to be fair? It may not be, but we have to be very careful. We have to be cautious. This idea that God is fair, by our definition, can expose some deeper unhealthy beliefs. George Barna of the Barna survey writes that "God helps those who help themselves. That belief exposes our theological cornerstone, that maybe we are the center of all things. That it is up to us to determine our own destinies, that God is merely our assistant and where we end up in life, not our foundation."

If we go further with this belief, it can allow us to labor under what's sort of an illusion, that you and I have earned every blessing we have in our lives, we have earned every blessing God has given us, while others, who are not as hardworking as you and I, haven't really earned their blessings. They're probably on sort of a divine welfare, if you will. Yes, we deserve every last blessing God has given us. We haven't done wrongs but those others ... But if we're honest and God is truly fair, there's a real possibility we might get what we deserve sometimes instead of what God has blessed us with.

I don't think it is a good idea to impose our idea of fairness on to God. God is not fair in that way. Not if it means being unmerciful or being without grace. Jesus didn't ask the man who was possessed, "Well, how did this happen? How did you get there? How did you let these unclean spirits in?" Jesus helped him. I can't think of a single story in the gospels where Jesus pre-screens somebody and then offers them healing, wholeness, help. "What did you do to become sick? What bad choices did you make to become hungry?" Jesus never says anything like that.

Jesus didn't ask those kind of questions. He did just the opposite. In John chapter eight, Jesus comes to a woman accused of adultery, the Pharisees, the stones in their hand, ready to convict her, ready to punish her according to the law, according to what's fair. Did she deserve help? She sinned, and so she must pay the price. She was helpless. She was defenseless before the law, but Jesus helped her, especially when she could not help herself. We see this concern for those in need throughout Jesus' ministry. It defines Jesus' ministry. It defines Jesus. It's a fundamental characteristic of God. God helps those who are in a hole so deep they can't get out, and that hole can be poverty, racism, war, homophobia, transphobia, violence, but like the woman caught in adultery, sometimes we do dig our own hole and even still, God comes to us.

Adam Hamilton again writes, "Thankfully, the idea that God helps those who help themselves does not capture the truth of the Bible." Sometimes we cannot help ourselves, not because we are poor or destitute or without resources, but because we've descended too deeply into sin or despair. God is the God of the hopeless cause, the God who loves sinners, the God who walks with us through the darkest valleys. He is the God who brings light into our darkness and helps us find peace amid our times of anxiety and despair. God rescues, God redeems, God forgives. We receive blessings from God even though we cannot earn them and we don't deserve them. Even when we have made a mess of things and cannot fix them, God extends mercy to us. There is a word for God's mercy towards those who cannot help themselves, and we call it grace. This concept of grace is central to the Christian gospel. It is the undeserved work of God in our lives, the unmerited favor of God.

Grace is not something we earn, buy, or work for. We cannot help ourselves into grace. We can only ask for and accept it. The essence of grace is that God helps those who cannot help themselves. The core message of our faith is God most certainly helps those who cannot help themselves. Paul writes in Romans that, "While we were sinners, Christ died for us." Paul doesn't write, "When we got our act together, when we repented, when we made whatever goals we're trying to make, then God, then Christ died for us." It's when we were helpless that Christ died for us. Those who are helpless, those who cannot help themselves, are the ones most in need of our help.

There are times when we can help ourselves and we absolutely should. God is counting on us to do the best we can to pray and to work, but there are times when people, including ourselves, cannot make it on their own, and God prompts us to help. We become the hands of God. We become God's answers to someone else's prayer. God's instruments of grace. You will find a time where you cannot help yourself. You probably already have. There are things from which you simply cannot save yourself, no matter how hard you try, and you will not have the strength or the resources or the knowledge. There may be times when you don't believe you deserve the help, because you know that somehow you are responsible for the situation you find yourself in.

In those moments we cry out to God, the one who can help us, the one who can put other people in our lives to help us, despite the fact we are poor and pitiable, weak and afraid, despite the fact that we may have made a mess of things, God reaches out and picks us up and makes us clean and whole. God says, "I love you. I will not abandon you. Put your trust in me. Together, we'll make this right." This is the message we find from God over and over again in scripture. "I am here," says God, "You matter to me. Your life has meaning and nothing, no matter what you may have done, what you have been unable to do, what has been done to you, can ever separate you from my love."