Did Jesus Tell Us to Give to Every Panhandler?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Good Monday morning.

00:00:05.280 | If you're driving to work or driving to school

00:00:07.840 | or walking the dog, whatever you're doing,

00:00:09.280 | welcome back and thanks for making the podcast

00:00:11.320 | a part of your weekly routine.

00:00:13.640 | We really appreciate it.

00:00:15.320 | We start the week with a question from a listener named Kate

00:00:18.960 | who lives in the bustling city of Cape Town.

00:00:21.600 | Pastor John, hello.

00:00:22.520 | I appreciate you and your ministry

00:00:24.080 | from down here in South Africa,

00:00:26.040 | a country with an unemployment rate at 35%,

00:00:30.080 | a rate often mentioned as the highest in the world.

00:00:33.080 | On the ground, navigating beggars is daily life for us.

00:00:38.080 | Here's a common daily scenario.

00:00:41.200 | You're sitting in your car at a stoplight.

00:00:42.920 | Someone approaches your window to ask for money or food.

00:00:45.920 | You sit facing forward, ignoring them to focus

00:00:48.680 | on the traffic light ahead until you finally drive off.

00:00:51.940 | Every time I do this, something doesn't feel right here,

00:00:55.440 | especially with regards to Luke 6:30,

00:00:58.280 | we should give to everyone who asks.

00:01:01.200 | But then what about 2 Thessalonians 3.10,

00:01:04.080 | that text that calls for diligent work

00:01:06.520 | or else you will not eat?

00:01:09.600 | I listened to APJ 80,

00:01:11.320 | how to handle panhandlers from over nine years ago,

00:01:15.080 | but there you didn't address this second text

00:01:17.240 | and I feel pulled between them.

00:01:18.820 | Pastor John, what suggestions would you have to offer me?

00:01:21.960 | - Before I give some specific suggestions

00:01:26.280 | for how to put together Jesus' command

00:01:29.840 | to give to everyone who begs from you, Luke 6.30,

00:01:33.280 | and Paul's command that those who are unwilling to work

00:01:36.720 | should not eat, 2 Thessalonians 3.10,

00:01:40.000 | let me lay a little bit of foundation

00:01:43.160 | that I think Jesus wants us to hear.

00:01:44.800 | And I'm really preaching to myself here,

00:01:47.040 | mainly as I've over the years analyzed my heart

00:01:50.480 | in dealing with folks who stand on the corner.

00:01:53.160 | I walk by them almost every day.

00:01:54.960 | So she's not alone in South Africa,

00:01:58.520 | here in the middle of Minneapolis,

00:02:00.280 | I deal with this on foot, not just in the car,

00:02:04.320 | which makes it even more poignant, I think.

00:02:08.240 | I think that Jesus' radical,

00:02:11.400 | sometimes unqualified commands are intended,

00:02:15.800 | especially, not only, but especially

00:02:19.760 | to sever the nerve of our deep, deep, deep selfishness

00:02:24.760 | as human beings.

00:02:27.360 | He meant to expose the most fundamental problem

00:02:32.080 | with human nature, John Piper's human nature,

00:02:35.200 | namely, our sinful condition that consists essentially

00:02:40.200 | in a deep bondage to self-exaltation, self-preservation,

00:02:47.760 | worldly self-gratification, all of which more or less

00:02:52.760 | conceals a self-asserting resistance to God's right

00:02:58.520 | to tell us what's good for us

00:03:01.720 | and to be for us what's good for us.

00:03:05.520 | I think Jesus cares more about exposing and healing

00:03:10.520 | this disease of our evil self-centeredness

00:03:16.040 | than he does about working out all the details

00:03:20.080 | of how our healing and liberation from self

00:03:23.200 | will express itself in ways that help other people,

00:03:29.000 | like the way we deal with panhandlers

00:03:30.800 | or the way we deal with idle, busybodies in church

00:03:34.200 | who won't work.

00:03:36.020 | Maybe you can sense what I see.

00:03:40.040 | If I read the passage that Kate referred to in her question,

00:03:45.600 | namely Luke 6:30, but I'll do the surrounding verses

00:03:49.280 | so we can really feel the force of what Jesus says.

00:03:53.560 | "I say to you who hear, love your enemies.

00:03:57.640 | Do good to those who hate you.

00:04:01.200 | Bless those who curse you.

00:04:04.760 | Pray for those who abuse you.

00:04:08.520 | To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.

00:04:13.160 | And from one who takes away your cloak,

00:04:16.760 | do not withhold your tunic either.

00:04:19.240 | Give to everyone who begs from you.

00:04:22.120 | And from one who takes away your goods,

00:04:24.800 | do not demand them back.

00:04:27.160 | And as you wish that others do to you, do so to them."

00:04:32.000 | Now that last command is what we call the golden rule,

00:04:36.320 | do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

00:04:38.740 | And that golden rule is really an alternate form

00:04:43.740 | of Jesus' second great commandment in Matthew 22, 39,

00:04:49.160 | namely, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

00:04:54.680 | I think doing unto others as you want them to do to you

00:04:59.400 | means take the measure of your own self-regard,

00:05:04.400 | your own self-care, your own self-comfort,

00:05:08.640 | and make that the measure of your regard

00:05:13.000 | and your care for others.

00:05:15.120 | Now that's a devastating command.

00:05:18.520 | It is a mortal threat to our own self-exaltation,

00:05:23.520 | self-preservation, self-gratification, self-centeredness,

00:05:29.760 | to take all that deep commitment

00:05:33.880 | that we have to our own well-being

00:05:38.260 | and make it the measure of our commitment

00:05:42.200 | to the well-being of others,

00:05:44.440 | that's simply gloriously astonishing,

00:05:49.440 | something nobody can do apart from a miracle of God.

00:05:54.800 | I think it's the same thing Jesus was calling for

00:05:58.720 | when he said, "If anyone would be first among you,

00:06:03.240 | he must be last of all, servant of all."

00:06:08.580 | Mark 9:35.

00:06:10.260 | Being the servant of all is virtually the same

00:06:14.060 | as loving others as you love yourself

00:06:16.660 | and doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.

00:06:19.080 | So I'm saying all of this as a preface

00:06:24.080 | to the ethical effort to sort out the details

00:06:29.140 | of what love looks like,

00:06:30.980 | what liberation from self-centeredness looks like,

00:06:35.140 | because if we don't come to terms

00:06:37.540 | with our own sinful selfishness,

00:06:41.460 | we will almost certainly twist the teachings of Jesus

00:06:45.680 | and Paul to make them fit into our bondage

00:06:50.640 | to self-gratification.

00:06:53.140 | So now to Kate's specific question

00:06:55.800 | regarding 2 Thessalonians 3.10.

00:06:59.640 | The situation at Thessalonica is that

00:07:03.520 | some people were using the nearness of Christ's coming

00:07:08.520 | to justify their unwillingness to go to work

00:07:12.080 | and in an ordinary way, earn their own living,

00:07:15.500 | but instead they were acting like busybodies

00:07:18.320 | and going from house to house

00:07:19.980 | and were expecting others to provide the food

00:07:23.800 | and the needs that they should be providing for themselves

00:07:27.340 | by their own gainful employment.

00:07:30.100 | So Paul says to the church

00:07:32.120 | in 2 Thessalonians 3.10,

00:07:34.120 | "Even when we were with you,

00:07:38.100 | we would give you this command,

00:07:40.440 | if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.

00:07:44.700 | For we hear that some among you walk in idleness,

00:07:48.940 | not busy at any work, but busybodies.

00:07:52.940 | Now such persons we command and encourage

00:07:56.240 | in the Lord Jesus Christ

00:07:59.140 | to do their work with quietness

00:08:02.220 | and to earn their own living."

00:08:05.820 | So these are professing Christians.

00:08:08.860 | He's exhorting them in the Lord Jesus.

00:08:11.140 | And it's not that they can't work,

00:08:14.260 | like they have a disability,

00:08:16.520 | but that they won't work.

00:08:18.420 | They don't want to.

00:08:19.900 | You can see that in the word not willing to work.

00:08:23.160 | So Paul is saying that one strategy,

00:08:26.900 | one brotherly, loving strategy

00:08:30.020 | to pressure these people back to doing what they ought to do,

00:08:34.540 | namely earn their own living,

00:08:35.780 | is making it harder for them to depend on the work of others.

00:08:40.780 | You might call this a form of tough love,

00:08:45.060 | but it would be very careless, I think,

00:08:50.060 | to take 2 Thessalonians 3.10

00:08:52.580 | and apply it to every beggar or panhandler

00:08:55.380 | or homeless person on the street.

00:08:57.740 | We simply do not know why they are there,

00:09:02.140 | not without getting involved with them and talking to them.

00:09:06.740 | So I think it would fly right in the face

00:09:10.860 | of the intention of the teachings of Jesus

00:09:14.920 | to use 2 Thessalonians 3.10 to make us resistant to beggars,

00:09:19.920 | assuming that they are lazy,

00:09:23.980 | and we don't know, unwilling to work for their own living.

00:09:27.060 | That might be the case, but it might not be.

00:09:29.220 | We just don't know.

00:09:31.500 | When Jesus says, "Give to everyone who begs from you,"

00:09:35.300 | I think he means that is our default inclination

00:09:40.300 | when we're set free from our bondage to self.

00:09:44.220 | That's our default inclination.

00:09:47.740 | That is our declaration of freedom

00:09:50.540 | from bondage to self and this world.

00:09:53.580 | That's our declaration of desire to be gracious,

00:09:58.020 | even to the undeserving.

00:09:59.540 | Love your enemies, bless those who curse you,

00:10:01.660 | do good to those who abuse you, and so on.

00:10:04.180 | To be sure, 2 Thessalonians 3.10 cautions us

00:10:09.180 | that there are situations in which giving to the one

00:10:14.340 | who asks would do more harm than good.

00:10:18.820 | And I think Jesus already implied that

00:10:21.980 | when he said earlier in that paragraph,

00:10:25.180 | "Do good to those who hate you."

00:10:28.140 | That means we need to think seriously

00:10:30.860 | about what is good for people.

00:10:33.980 | And when he said, "As you wish that others would do to you,"

00:10:38.980 | you would want people to do what's really good for you,

00:10:43.020 | what helps.

00:10:44.700 | So I encourage all of us to do a little bit of research,

00:10:48.900 | a little bit of homework of what would be really most helpful

00:10:53.820 | to people on the street, all things considered.

00:10:56.940 | It's not an easy question.

00:10:59.340 | And since we're so prone towards selfishness,

00:11:03.300 | I think we should err on the side

00:11:06.940 | of being taken advantage of,

00:11:09.720 | rather than erring on the side of shrewdly protecting

00:11:15.620 | our wallet and our ego.

00:11:18.460 | At the last judgment, I've thought about this many times,

00:11:22.260 | at the last judgment,

00:11:24.540 | I think Jesus will be much more prone

00:11:29.540 | to commend lavish generosity to the undeserving

00:11:34.740 | than he will be to commend how shrewd we were

00:11:39.940 | in keeping for ourselves our few dollars

00:11:43.500 | than giving them away.

00:11:45.620 | I just can't imagine Jesus saying,

00:11:47.820 | "Wow, you were especially good at being shrewd,

00:11:50.940 | at not being taken advantage of."

00:11:52.980 | I don't hear anything like that in Jesus' teachings.

00:11:56.420 | So let's know our own hearts.

00:12:00.180 | Let's confess the sin of selfishness.

00:12:03.500 | Let's pray for the compassion of Jesus

00:12:07.380 | and the far-seeing wisdom of Jesus.

00:12:11.420 | And let's do our homework, a little bit of research

00:12:14.740 | to find out how our lives as a whole

00:12:18.980 | can bring blessing into people's lives,

00:12:22.380 | especially eternal blessing.

00:12:25.780 | - Yeah, thank you, Pastor John.

00:12:28.260 | And check out episode 80 for more on this topic,

00:12:31.140 | how to handle panhandlers,

00:12:33.460 | an old episode, one deep in the dark and dusty recesses

00:12:36.660 | of the archive from our first year,

00:12:38.860 | recorded over nine years ago now.

00:12:41.420 | It's incredible.

00:12:42.700 | You can find that at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:12:47.380 | Well, one of John Piper's favorite Bible texts

00:12:51.340 | in the entire Bible on the Christian life

00:12:54.020 | is one we're gonna look at next time.

00:12:55.500 | The text is 2 Thessalonians 1, verses 11 to 12,

00:12:59.580 | and it is loaded with a lot of truth

00:13:01.620 | that we need for our daily lives.

00:13:03.820 | We'll break it down next time.

00:13:05.300 | I'm your host Tony Renke.

00:13:06.260 | We'll see you back here on Wednesday.

00:13:08.100 | Thanks for listening.

00:13:09.140 | (upbeat music)

00:13:11.740 | (upbeat music)

00:13:14.340 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Did Jesus Tell Us to Give to Every Panhandler?

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