58:1 “Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins. 2 Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God. 3 ‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’ Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure,1 and oppress all your workers. 4 Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. 5 Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the LORD? 6 “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed2 go free, and to break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? 8 Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. 9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, 10 if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. 11 And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. 12 And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.
Footnotes
[1]58:3Or pursue your own business [2]58:6Or bruised
58:1 “Cry aloud; do not hold back; lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins. 2 Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God. 3 ‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’ Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure,1 and oppress all your workers. 4 Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. 5 Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the LORD? 6 “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed2 go free, and to break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? 8 Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. 9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, 10 if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. 11 And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. 12 And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.
Footnotes
[1]58:3Or pursue your own business [2]58:6Or bruised
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Joel Brooks:
I invite you to open your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 58 Isaiah chapter 58. Over the past few weeks, we've been looking at some doctrines that are very important to our church, doctrines we hold dearly. Now we are certainly not going to cover everything. Like I explained last week, there's a a lot of beliefs that we hold dearly that we're not gonna touch. Things like the trinity.
Joel Brooks:
We're not going to talk about baptism. Many beliefs but we're we're gonna look at a few distinctives. That I think really should help shape and define us as a church. Before we start our next series, which likely is gonna take us about 2 years to get through, as we go through the gospel of Luke. What we've looked at in the past few weeks is the importance of preaching.
Joel Brooks:
And not just preaching anything, but preaching the word. We've looked at the sovereignty and the supremacy of Christ in all things, and that's how the that's the message that the world needs to hear. Last week we looked at the holiness of God, and now the the holiness of God radically transforms us as he rubs us the wrong way. As he is abrasive to us at times, that is us being transformed into his image, and how it is important for us to worship a holy God, and not to create a God in our own image. And how holiness shapes our worship.
Joel Brooks:
And now for the next 2 weeks, we're gonna look at God's heart for the poor and the oppressed. It was something I just could not cram into 1 week. And so for the next 2, this is what we'll be looking at. And I know some of you might be thinking that, yes, that is an important issue, but really is it a central issue? Maybe some of you grew up in churches thinking, yes I know we should help the poor.
Joel Brooks:
We should serve the poor, but that's just kind of a program that you you tack on. You know, you do all these other things, and then when you have time, or then when you finally have money, that's something you do. And and and probably if you grew up like me, you'd hate to admit this, but you kind of think that's what the liberal churches do. They're the ones who take care of the poor. We preach the word.
Joel Brooks:
These two things go hand in hand, and I I hope to show you over the next couple of weeks just how central it is, our call to the poor. Isaiah 58, we'll begin reading in the first verse. Cry aloud. Do not hold back. Lift up your voice like a trumpet.
Joel Brooks:
Declare to my people their transgression. To the house of Jacob their sins. Yet, they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the judgment of their God. They ask of me righteous judgments. They delight to draw near to God.
Joel Brooks:
Why have we fasted and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves and you take no knowledge of it? Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure and oppress all your workers. Behold, you fast only to quarrel, and to fight, and to hit with a fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high.
Joel Brooks:
Is this the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble themselves? Is it to bow down his head like a reed and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast? A day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I choose?
Joel Brooks:
To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the straps of the yoke. To let the oppressed to go free and to break every yoke. Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house? When you see the naked to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh. Then shall your light break forth like the dawn and your healing shall spring up speedily.
Joel Brooks:
Your righteousness shall go before you. The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call and the Lord will answer. And you shall cry and he will say, here I am. If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness.
Joel Brooks:
If you pour yourself out for the hungry, and satisfy the desire of afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness, and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorch places, and make your bones strong. And you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt. You shall raise up the foundations of many generations.
Joel Brooks:
You shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of the streets to dwell in. Pray with me. Lord, we ask that you would honor the very reading of your word. You would heal us where we need healing. You would convict us where we need convicting.
Joel Brooks:
Lord, my words are death, but your words are life, and we ask that you would come and speak life here. May my words fall to the ground and blow away, not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may your words stay, and may they change us. I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
Joel Brooks:
Many of you have probably been church shopping before. Perhaps some of you are doing that right now. I hope you've been impressed with all that we have to offer, our, you know, incredible lack of parking. Our girls, you know, power sayings kind of all over the place. And girls, we have like 50 bathrooms.
Joel Brooks:
Guys, there's 1. We meet in the school gym. I hope you're impressed with that. And the one thing you really should be impressed with is we have a vending machine in the very place where we worship. And I'm just waiting for some person to finally just give up on the message and just get up and go there.
Joel Brooks:
I would be impressed. Not a harsh word from me. Yeah. I I take that back then. Take that back then.
Joel Brooks:
You know, there's certain things that we we look for when we are church shopping. Some people they look for, it's got to be solid biblical preaching. Others, it's dynamic worship. Some are really looking into, well the children's ministry's gotta blow me away. And and some kinda had this thing that's really hard to gauge, I've gotta I've gotta feel the Holy Spirit in in there, or, there's all these different gauges of what we're looking for.
Joel Brooks:
When I was in college, I looked for the place that gave food. Honestly, that was it. Every week, University of Georgia, there was gonna be some church that had a luncheon for college students. That was my guide at the time. Some people look presently at Krispy Kreme Donuts, or Starbucks, or something like that that a church has to offer.
Joel Brooks:
We all have different things, and somehow it builds a score, and we decide if we should go back to that church. Did it rate high enough or did it not? But we all do this, do this. And it made me start thinking, I wonder what would happen if Isaiah, you know, came into our church. What happened when Isaiah came into this church?
Joel Brooks:
You would think it was a really good church. I mean look how it's described. God describes it this way, they seek me daily and delight to know my ways. Pretty good. They ask of me righteous judgments.
Joel Brooks:
They delight to draw near to God. That sounds like a really good church. They they daily seek God. I mean who wouldn't want to go to that? Two times God uses the word delight when describing their pursuit of Him.
Joel Brooks:
They're joyfully pursuing God. They wanna know what God's will is for their church. They're very serious about their faith because they're all fasting. And yet Isaiah looks at that and he says, no that's something is critically foundationally wrong here. The people realize there's something wrong.
Joel Brooks:
Verse 3, they say, God, why have we fasted and you don't see it? Why have we humbled ourselves and you don't even know it? Despite all of their work, despite all of their seeking, they they realize there's something missing, Something they can't break through, and perhaps you have felt something similar. You know, you read your bible every day. You pray.
Joel Brooks:
You're in accountability groups. You're in all these different things, and yet something just kind of doesn't seem right. Something's a little distant in your relationship with God, and so you think, well I need to read another book, or I need to join another group, or I need to do something like that. But then you realize there's something fundamentally wrong. God seems so distant.
Joel Brooks:
Well there is something fundamentally wrong. Look at verse 6 and 7 again. Is not this the fast that I choose, to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house, when you see the naked to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh. You see, although these people had or were seeking the lord in some sense, they had neglected to serve the poor.
Joel Brooks:
They had neglected to look out out for the oppressed. And when God sees us, he says, this is not a periphery issue. This isn't something you tack on to worship.
Jeffrey Heine:
This is the heart of worship here. This is worship,
Joel Brooks:
and it's the heart of who God has called us to be as a church. Proverbs 1917 says, whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord. When we give to the poor, we give to the Lord. Giving to the poor is a way that we get to give to God. You know one of the the problems that I think that we have, is we have internalized religion so much.
Joel Brooks:
We we've converted it into into private study and into private prayer. And it's become very, very individualistic and privatized, and we've all fallen into that trap. I mean, admit it. Some of you probably have friends who hold you accountable for your walk with the lord, good friends. And and you you know, you probably have questions like, did you have your quiet time this week?
Joel Brooks:
Every day, oh, yes. Check. Good. You know the sin we talked about? Did did you succumb to that temptation?
Joel Brooks:
No, check. Great. You're doing well, walk with the Lord is fine. And those are good questions. Isaiah would probably add a few.
Joel Brooks:
He would say, to defeat the hungry. What did you do in your job, or in your neighborhood to to help the oppressed go free. It's a foundational issue. James says that religion that is pure and undefiled before god the father is this, visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself from the stain from the world. I think one of the crying shames that has happened over the last 30 years is the reaction of the evangelical church to what we would call the social gospel.
Joel Brooks:
What we would call the social gospel. And I'm not sure if you're familiar with that term, the social gospel. This is the label that evangelical churches gave to, churches who were liberal in their doctrine, yet generous in their deeds. They were liberal in their doctrine, yet they were generous in their deeds, and they label that a a social gospel. These churches did not, have what we would consider a very strong theology.
Joel Brooks:
We might even say that they really didn't understand the gospel, some of these churches. You know, doctrinal or moral beliefs were secondary. If you were to sum up the social gospel, this is this is what they would believe. People need our help, not our preaching. That's the social gospel.
Joel Brooks:
People need our help, not our preaching. Well, the the evangelical community, they reacted against that in full force, and they they they bent the nail the other way. They made sure that people got their doctrine right. They made sure that people were morally pure, and then they privatized their faith. Very individualistic, very private.
Joel Brooks:
And so while the the social liberal, the social gospel liberals might rightly be accused of only focusing on the the poor and not on personal sanctification. The conservative evangelical might be rightly accused of just focusing on personal sanctification, but nothing outwards. And both of those extremes terribly miss the mark. I grew up in a Bible believing Baptist church. I mean, I was there probably 5 days a week.
Joel Brooks:
My mom was a church organist. My dad was a deacon. I mean, at times it seemed like almost the Brooks family ran the church, and I was always there. It was a
Caleb Chancey:
Bible believing
Joel Brooks:
church, and it was a pretty good church. It taught sin, and it taught the big sins, and how you're to avoid them. I mean, I remember growing up hearing about the big sins. Homosexuality, adultery, excessive drinking, because it would lead to dancing. Of course, being baptist.
Joel Brooks:
Drugs. I mean, these were the big sins. These were the sins that kept you from God. Those were the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah. That's what we were told.
Joel Brooks:
Those wicked cities. And actually, I want us to look at Sodom and Gomorrah. I want us to look at these 2 cities. Isaiah actually invites the comparison in Isaiah chapter 1. He compares the people that he's addressing.
Joel Brooks:
He says, you're just like Sodom. He looks at the rulers of Israel and says, you're the rulers of Sodom. He looks at the people, he says, you are the people of Sodom. He compares the two situations. And and at first you might think that doesn't really seem fair because Sodom and Gomorrah, I mean that was like you know all this perverse, you know, revelry and and homosexuality.
Joel Brooks:
And here they're just kind of neglecting the poor. But Isaiah looks at them and he sees them the same. You know most of us, if you wanna turn to Genesis 19, you can. Most of us are familiar with that story of Sodom and Gomorrah. You know God sends 2 angels down to destroy these 2 wicked cities.
Joel Brooks:
And so these angels arrive at the city gates, and the moment they get there Lot sees them and he knows there's only a limited time but he's got to get them out of the city gates. They cannot spend the night in the city gates because he knows what the people of Sodom are gonna do. And so he insists, come into my house. And like, Oh we're absolutely fine. Get in my No we're fine.
Joel Brooks:
And he insisted to finally these 2 angels, they go into Lot's house. But it's too late. The people of the city saw them. They saw the strangers. And so in Genesis 19, we'll read verse 4 through 9.
Joel Brooks:
Says, but before they lay down the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man surrounded the house. And they called to Lot, where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them. Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him, and said, I beg you my brothers do not act so wickedly. Behold I have 2 daughters who have not known any man.
Joel Brooks:
Let me bring them out to you and do to them as you please. Only do nothing to these men for they have come under the shelter of my roof. But they said, stand back. They said, this fellow came as a sojourn and he has become the judge. Now we will deal worse with you than with them.
Joel Brooks:
Then they pressed hard against Lot and drew near to break down the door. And now, this doesn't really need my commentary. It's one of the most disgusting chapters in the Bible. It's not the most disgusting. You'll find more that are worse, but it's not exactly a highlight.
Joel Brooks:
And I've heard a lot of sermons on Genesis 19, I've heard a lot of allusions to this text, you know. You you walk down Bourbon Street and people were like, Sodom and Gomorrah. And everybody knows what that means. It means what's going on here is just like what's happening there. It's the picture we have.
Joel Brooks:
At our home group this past week, I I asked our group I said, when you think of Sodom and Gomorrah, what sins do you think of? And we got, you know, homosexuality, violence, you know, some kind of perverse revelry, And there's a wrong. They might have been there, but that's not why God judged Sodom and Gomorrah. In Ezekiel 16, which is also one of the grossest chapters in all the Bible, God calls Israel a whore about 20 times. And then he says, you know what?
Joel Brooks:
You and Sodom are sisters. You're sisters. And in verse 49 he says, as I live, declares the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom. She and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not help the poor and needy.
Joel Brooks:
That's the sin. That's why it destroyed them. I mean did you hear that because this was the sin of your sister, Sodom. She and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not help the poor and the needy. Both Ezekiel and Isaiah, they point to that as a reason that God came in and he judged Sodom as because of their neglect of the poor.
Joel Brooks:
Now sure they had other sins, but that's not what the prophets point to. It's what the conservative evangelicals point to. Yeah, judge them. They were homosexuals. Sexually perverse.
Joel Brooks:
That's why God destroyed them. We're not like that. Actually, we we can be a lot like that. It can be a lot like the sins that they committed. We can have pride, that kind of hits close to home.
Joel Brooks:
We can neglect the poor. Bruce Waltke, I don't know if you've ever heard of him, he's a famous Hebrew scholar, very well respected, and I came across something he said about 6 years ago that really affected the way I saw scripture. He gave definitions to to 2 words, the righteous man and the wicked man. The righteous man and the wicked man. And this is his definition.
Joel Brooks:
Says a righteous person is the person who disadvantages him or herself for the community. That's the righteous person, as the bible sees it. The wicked person is a person who believes that his or her resources are for their own benefit. A wicked person is the person who believes that his or her resources are for their own benefit. So Bruce Walkie says, when you look at the Hebrew, that's what you should walk away with.
Joel Brooks:
And that hits a little too close to home. If I plug that in every time I see the righteous or the wicked, I just don't like reading my Bible actually. You know Jesus said in Luke 17, he said, in the days of Lot, they were eating and drinking. They were buying and selling. They were planting and building.
Joel Brooks:
But on the day Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all. And what he does is he just describes ordinary life. I mean, that's what Jesus described. On that day, the day they were destroyed, what were they doing? They were buying, selling, eating, drinking, they were planting and building ordinary life at the expense of the poor.
Joel Brooks:
And if our normal life comes at the expense of the poor, this breaks God's heart. Or I guess a better way to say that is, if we don't serve the poor, then we don't understand God's heart. We don't understand our calling as a church. Now we need to notice a few things in particular about this passage, if we're to truly have a heart for the poor and for the oppressed. I want you to notice that, the morals of the poor are not mentioned.
Joel Brooks:
And try going through scripture finding any of the times when it talks about us serving the poor, ministering to the poor that it says, and it's dependent upon these things. The morals of the poor are not mentioned. Notice that the work ethic of the poor is not mentioned. We don't know if these poor are lazy. We don't know if they're hard workers.
Joel Brooks:
We know nothing about the poor. It doesn't matter. You know when God delivered Israel from slavery, which he alludes to that in Isaiah 58, when he talks about loosening the chains and and setting the oppressed free and all that when he eludes to that. But when he freed Israel from slavery, which we looked at a few months ago, let me ask you, did those people trust God? Did the Israelites trust God at that moment that he delivered them?
Joel Brooks:
Were they moral people? You know, like the kind of people who certainly wouldn't bow down and worship a golden calf, something like that. Did these people make personal sacrifices? Did they did they do that sacrifice? Well, actually remember they were unwilling to even sacrifice their own cattle to use for food.
Joel Brooks:
But they kept crying out to God, feed us, feed us, feed us, even when they had an abundance. Were these people willing to take risk? Were they willing to fight for it something? You know, like going to the promised land and being at the edge there, and God saying, it's yours for the taking. Get up and take it.
Joel Brooks:
They didn't have any of those qualities. Qualities that I look at for an excuse to help the poor. I want them to be more, I want them to be working hard, I want them to do all those things, and then I will help. Then you have somehow merited my good favor. And when I believe that, it means I do not understand mercy.
Joel Brooks:
I do not understand God's grace to me because I merited nothing. Absolutely nothing. If we truly have encountered this merciful God, we will show others the same mercy he has shown us. Something else that we we need to to notice comes in verse 6. When it talks about loosening bonds of wickedness, undoing straps of the yoke, let the oppressed go free, break every yoke.
Joel Brooks:
We we help the poor and the oppressed by helping them not helping them just kinda lift their yoke, or or loosen their yoke, or helping them carry the burden. We don't do that, we break it. We break the yoke. And this means that we do a lot more than just, you know, whenever we see a homeless person, we give them a few dollars so they could buy the next meal and they could go on their way. That's doesn't really do them that much good.
Joel Brooks:
It might loosen the collar a little bit, lighten their load a little bit, but it doesn't break the yoke. To break the yoke means that we actually have to start restructuring school systems. It means that we have to actually really invest in any of the local churches that are in these areas of poverty. It means that we have to start mentoring some of the boys that don't have any fathers. Means we have to get involved.
Joel Brooks:
We have to grow businesses and dying communities.
Jeffrey Heine:
This is hard work, is what this is. It's hard work.
Joel Brooks:
The people in Isaiah 58, they're boasting, God we're fasting. God looks down, he's not impressed. Fasting? Fasting is easy. Easy, and it's very privatized.
Joel Brooks:
What I'm calling you to do is so much greater and so much harder. Getting involved in the lives of the poor and trying to help people who are often going to resist you, they'll take something from you. It's gonna take every ounce of energy you've got. I hope as a church it makes us totally dependent upon the Lord. Now if you're feeling really guilty right now, Sorry.
Joel Brooks:
That's not my intent. It really is not. Guilt is a horrible, horrible motivator. I mean, it works once, sort of. I mean, you know, you've all seen the commercials on TV about the starving, hungry children, you watched it once.
Joel Brooks:
I guarantee almost every other time it came on, click. You're you're searching for the remote. You don't wanna go through that experience again. And did it really change you? No, it just made you feel bad.
Joel Brooks:
Guilt is a terrible motivator. Your concern for the poor has got to come because your heart is gripped with the gospel, which is what we've looked at for the last 7 months, the gospel. If it doesn't flow out of that, it's gonna lead you astray. Now these people in Isaiah, they were so self centered in their seeking after God. Do not make the same mistake, and now try to go out and serve the poor, and not try to do all these things for the same selfish reasons, so that you could somehow earn God's favor, so that somehow God should be good to you because you're doing all these things.
Joel Brooks:
That's the same mistake they made. God look at us. We're doing these things. Now have favor on us. You can't merit any favor.
Joel Brooks:
No it's because the gospel has so transformed your life, that the love of Christ has so consumed you that this is an outflow. We don't earn anything. A true concern for the poor comes from understanding Jesus. You know, we believe in a God who so identified with the poor, he became poor. A god who was born in a trough.
Joel Brooks:
Born in a trough to poor parents who couldn't even afford a lamb to sacrifice, but had to sacrifice 2 birds. As an adult, he was homeless. He said, foxes have holes, birds have nests. The son of man, the king of all glory does not even have a home or a place to lay his head. And at his death, the only possession that he had was that garment that was torn from him.
Joel Brooks:
It's all Jesus' own. Jesus also identifies with the oppressed, because he became oppressed. He suffered injustice. He had a mockery of a trial, kidnapped in the middle of the night, beaten by his jury, tried without being able to call even a single witness. I mean, he was a victim of extreme injustice, and he died an excruciating death.
Joel Brooks:
And when we see those things, it should move us. Move us to worship. Because Jesus has told us that the way that we can feed him is to feed the hungry. The way that we could visit him is to visit those in prison, visit the the widows. The way that we could clothe him is by clothing the homeless.
Joel Brooks:
This is a way we get to worship him. What a privilege to worship Jesus who became so poor. And I want you to hear me church. This is our calling. It's our calling.
Joel Brooks:
Verse 10 says, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire for the afflicted, then your light, then shall your light rise in the darkness. We're called to be a city on a hill, we're called to be a light shining. This is how our light shines. And if you really want your light to shine, you know when one person kinda you know, maybe goes to a homeless shelter, mentors and stuff, you know, really gives a lot of money. When one person does that, the world notices that one person, and you know what they say?
Joel Brooks:
What a great guy. That is a great guy. I mean, wow. He's just so selfless. Man, he's really unique, and they might ask about the faith.
Joel Brooks:
You know, why why do you believe that way? But you know what happens when a community does that? An entire community invest in the poor. They invest in the oppressed. They they work to liberate those, those systems of oppression.
Joel Brooks:
Do you know what happens when an entire community does that? They don't say, those that community is kind of generous. They think, What happened? What happened to that group of people? Something happened to utterly transform them.
Joel Brooks:
And when a group of people does that, they do become a city on a hill. They do become a light shining, and it points straight to the glory of Jesus. And so it takes all of us to encourage one another. To say, we are going to do this.
Jeffrey Heine:
God's called us to do this.
Joel Brooks:
Yes, he has called us to doctrinal purity, to moral purity. He's called us to preach the word. He has called us to cry out the sovereignty and the supremacy and the holiness of Jesus. You will always hear me say that, but he has also called us fundamentally to our calling to help and to serve the poor. I wanna look more at that next week.
Joel Brooks:
Not out of guilt, but out of the love for the one who made himself poor so that we and him might be rich. Pray with me. Jesus, our hearts treasure so many things. Through your spirit, I pray that we would treasure the only pearl that matters. And out of joy, we would sell everything we have, leave everything behind so that we might possess it.
Joel Brooks:
May we treasure you that much. It seems like a frightening thing, but, lord, you're worth it. We want to declare your worth to the world. Pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.