We have limited time and resources as a local community, and even as the universal church.  If you were to gather every Christian in the world together and pool their finances, you couldn’t feed the fowls of the earth for one day, yet Jesus does it every day; amen?  His eye is on the sparrow, praise God!  God sees and He cares.  But our resources, He says, are to be used to care and provide for those who are among us.  I don’t want to get off into this in great detail, but that’s why God established in the Law that those of us with abundance are to lend money to those in need, but may not charge them interest; amen?

We can do good and help and bail them out, and we can give gifts, etc., but we can’t get caught up in this (I wouldn’t call it a doctrine) philosophy today in the Christian church that says our mandate is to go out and help humanity.  Our mandate is to go into all the world and preach the gospel; amen?  Even the going into all the world and preaching the gospel isn’t something, necessarily, that’s done in Billy Graham’s style.  It’s not renting huge coliseums and preaching these meetings.  Jesus did not speak that to any individual.  He did not say, “Tom, you go out into all the world and preach the gospel.  I’m choosing you to do that.  It’s all on you”; amen?  He told the church to go into all the world.  Every individual, every member, is responsible to evangelize his Jerusalem, his Judea, his Samaria, to the uttermost parts of the earth.  Are we doing our job?  Are we doing our part?

You see, we are talking about doing good.  In the parable of the Good Samaritan, isn’t it interesting who passed the man by?  The priest passed him by.  The Levite passed him by.  Let me ask you:  where did the priests and Levites get their money?  Does anybody know?  It was from the tithe, wasn’t it?  It’s the people honoring God, then God supporting that system that He originated; but these people were so selfish that they received all of their resources freely from God, but they couldn’t humble themselves?  They didn’t have a heart to minister to this need; only the Samaritan “dog” did.  As we go on, we will see in the Scriptures that we are told to care for, and minister to, our enemies as well as those who are just practical pagan non-believers, but especially the household of faith; amen?  There should not, and will not, ever be, in this ministry, an ideology or a doctrine that says, “Be warmed and filled.  Go your way.”  I’m talking about the household of faith.  If we have the ability, we do what we can to provide care.