Caring for the Vulnerable - Proverbs 24 - The Wise Family

Yo, yo, yo. What's going on? Y'all good? Y'all good?

Y'all good? Nice. Nice.

Nice. I got situated up here. But my name is Avery Jackson. My name is Avery Jackson. I have the privilege of being in the student ministry, working at the student ministry.

If there's any students in the building, any students in the building. But I have the honor of being up here on stage, but I first want to give honor where honors do to Pastor Andrew and Anna Hopper. Just for their leadership of leading this church and how much they love, love you all and love me and love the whole church. So can we give them a round of applause? Thank God for them. I want to shout out my parents. Shout out to my mom, my dad and my brother.

I would not be here without them. Some of y'all might catch that and like how in the world does your brother have anything to do with that? But he does. Okay, we're going to try that again. Like we have some coffee. I'm gonna continue this sermon series called the wise. There we go. Now y'all with me. Now you're with me.

Have y'all been enjoying the series so far? Right. Okay. All right. But not. So what about Ryan last week, Ryan last week?

Do y'all have a good time? Listen to that. Justin talking about adjusting your all adjusting your all. But like I said, we're in the next installment of the wise family today. So since it's young community, educators weekend, look at this, this sermon as a three part sermon series or kind of sermon thing. You know what I'm saying?

Three part. So we're all going to take different aspects and pull something out of it and then we'll have a good time with it. All right. So we're going to be in Proverbs chapter 24 Proverbs chapter 24 verses 10 through 12 Proverbs chapter 24 verse 10 through 12. Do I have any paper Bible people in the building?

Do I have electronic bibles? I can't trust you. I can't trust you. I'm just playing. I got a lot. I'll be honest.

I joke around a lot a lot. So but let me get serious. So we're going to be in Proverbs chapter 24 verse 10 through 12. And this is what it says. If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small. Rescue those who are being taken away to death. Hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.

If you say behold, we did not know this does not does not he who weighs the heart perceive it does not he who keeps watch over our soul know it and will he not repay man according to his work according to his work. So for all my note takers in the building, the main idea of of of today is going to be wise families care for the vulnerable wise families care. For the vulnerable. So I want you to turn to your neighbor. I want you to turn to your neighbor and say neighbor. Okay, turn to your neighbor and say neighbor. Care for the vulnerable.

Turn to the other neighborhood that you completely ignored and say neighbor. I don't know about you, but I want to care for the vulnerable. Nice.

That's what I'm talking about. All right, let's pray. Let's pray Lord help us to be a people a church that has a heart and cares deeply for all people.

Especially those that are the vulnerable. I pray you move me out of the way and allow me to be an instrument and speak through me. I pray that eyes can see ears will be open and hearts will be softened in Jesus name.

I pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. So I'm gonna I'm gonna start off with a question.

I just might not be a sunny side uptight question, but I ain't got a lot of time so I have to get to it. Alright, so who in here has been through a difficult time. Anybody here been through a difficult time. I heard that. Amen.

I know like I said, we're coming out of COVID-19 and stuff like that still coming out of it. So I know that was a difficult time for a lot of us. But as I see here in the room, a lot of us raise our hand, but I'm gonna tell you a time where I have gone through a difficult time. But before we do that, it's safe to say that by the show of hands, we've all been through a team through a thing called adversity, adversity. Everybody say adversity. Adversity. Adversity. So this is what adversity is. This is what adversity is. Adversity is situations or things in life that brings you hardships, challenges, or misfortunes.

Adversity is situations or things in life that brings you hardships, challenges, or misfortunes. Severe asthma. Severe asthma. Does anybody can relate to that in the building? Anybody have asthma in here?

Anybody? Yeah, you can raise your hand high because I have it and it is tough. It is tough.

But no, severe asthma. So what I mean by that, how that has given me adversity is you play a sport. So I used to play basketball.

I just coach and train it now. Shout out to the people in the room that's on the team. But I used to play basketball and I would play for like a minute and then I had to come out the game because I had an asthma attack. And I would sit there and watch everybody play, all that good stuff.

Another time is when you're at school and you have asthma attack and then you realize you have an asthma attack. So you have to go inside and you got to watch everybody play. So then you don't have fun. So you have to sit there with a breathing machine and look like you're about dead.

And then, but you can't have fun and play outside. Another time, worst of all, is when, when you have asthma attack or you're playing sports or anything like that, you start wheezing, you start wheezing and then pew. And then the kids are looking at you about half crazy and then they start making fun of you because you're wheezing.

Like what? And so that, that's asthma has shaped my life. It is adversity I've been through, right? Getting made fun of, walking through adversity. I can't play with my, my friends, right? I gotta, I love playing basketball, but then I can only play for a minute and then I don't have to leave. And then with that, I will have to go work out cause I'll overweight. It just, a lot of things happen.

A lot of things happen because of my asthma, right? So, so that leads me to my first point. That leads me to my first point. My first point, the only point is our strength is tested through adversity. Our strength is tested through adversity. Our strength is tested through adversity, but I want to add another layer on top of that because this passage, this passage is trying to show us to not only look at our own personal adversity, but it is calling us, calling us to take care and rescue others in the midst of, in the midst of their adversity. All right. So that's what the passage is.

Yes. It's one thing to look at our own, but this passage is clearly calling us to, to jump in and, and rescue those that are going through their own adversity. So let's read verses 10 and 11 again. If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small. Rescue those who are being taken away to death.

There it is. Rescue those who are being taken away to death. Hold back those who are stumbling to be slaughtered. Other translations say, if you do nothing in difficult time, your strength is limited. Like I mentioned earlier today, it seems like all of us have been through difficult times, have been through adversity. But the thing about it is if we can be honest in the room, if we can be honest in the room, when we're faced with adversity, our tendency is to look at it and to be like, ah, I'm good.

That's adversity over there. Or, or, or we sit there, we look at the adversity and we just faint. We just like, Lord, I can't do this no more. I'm done.

I'm done. Or, or, or we sit there and look at adversity over here and there's a whole bunch of mess. There's somebody's mess. And we look at it as like, Ooh, if I touch that mess, I'm gonna get too dirty. So that's like, sometimes we look at adversity like that.

Adversity that we need something outside of ourselves to strengthen us when we're going through adversity. Just like when I deal with my asthma, there is nothing I can do. There's nothing my mom can do. There's not my dad can do.

There's nothing that anybody can do for me except for this little thing called an inhaler. He helps me. The Lord is my strength and my shield. My heart trusts him and he helps me.

My heart leaps for joy. And with my song, I praise him. The Lord is my strength.

He, and I'm here to encourage somebody. He is your strength. He is your strength. And the reason we can rely on Jesus is because he entered, catches, he entered into our adversity. He entered into our adversity and he endured. The cross. So we can freely call upon his great name for the joy that lay before him, for the joy that lay before him, for the that lay before him.

I know it sounds crazy. I know it sounds crazy, but Jesus had joy when he entered into our adversity. But look at the Lord say this, I want the right hand of God for consider him who endures, such hostility from centers against himself so that you won't grow weary and give up. That's why that's why we can go to him as our source of strength. But he doesn't only give us strength, he only, he doesn't only give us strength, but he holds us there. He holds us it, so it's one thing for, we go to him, Jesus, I need strength. Appreciate it. See you later.

No, no, no, no. We go to him, he gives us strength and we get to sit there and we get to sit and he holds us. I need the strength. holds us he holds us there and that's what we need that's what we need so we need to praise God we need to take some time this week or even right now to praise God that we have a Savior that feels what we feel and he gives us the strength that we need we don't have to rely on ourselves we don't have to rely on money we don't have to rely on our family we don't have to rely on our best friends even though those things are good those things are great things all right I got family I got friends I got money sometimes money gets me in situations that can get me right out of it but I feel like we rely on those I feel like we rely on those things too much but with this trying to show us is those things are good but that's not gonna hold you that's not gonna hold you and watch because of that now our perspective gets to change our perspective changes now if we get to look and see how can I not how can I not enter in to your adversity and help you because I know somebody that has my side Jesus is right here with me now I can enter in your adversity with you because you need me to be the hands and feet of Jesus for you that's good that's good the Lord won't he do it won't he do it all right as I I'm at a time I'm at a time so so I'm gonna bring Michael up to the stage and and my prayer my prayer is that that that you and I and all of us will call upon the Lord to strengthen us to strengthen us to enter in to other people's adversity so we could be the hands and feet of Jesus for them and like I said earlier it's not one Jesus gives us a strength but yes we need to hear that some of us need to hear that but now some of us also need to hear he holds us in that strength he holds us in that strength so I'm gonna ask Michael to come up and talk about who who are the vulnerable people in this world said Mercy Hill Mercy Hill what a joy it is to be here today my name is Michael Nunn I'm the executive pastor at Redemption Church in Roanoke Virginia yeah absolutely some of you may remember just a couple years ago they were sent out from Mercy Hill and now me and God is doing things he's moving it is amazing to see we've been there I've been there the last week just started this past week so it's amazing to see informally just last weekend I was on staff and just stepped off of staff and I was the guest experience associate director at the Clifton Road campus yeah shout out 3815 Clifton Road as Pastor Nico so eloquently says and so Clifton I miss you guys I love you and so everyone I'm gonna go ahead and go in now to everyone in here at some time or another has experienced the joys of moving and of course when I say joys I mean absolute nightmares right and so no matter whether you hire someone to do it you do it yourself man it is abysmal it is a nightmare every single time beyond comprehension and my wife and I just moved we know this very well we just moved last week to Roanoke and of course it was awful again but we were we realized it is one of the easiest ways to procrastinate it reminded me also of a time when I moved while living in Vermont I was moving from a second-story apartment into a one-story house and I was working a full-time job a part-time job during that season and I was single but I remember being so excited that I get to finally move into a house and I was dating my now wife and thinking one day when we get married she's gonna move into this place and it's gonna be amazing and thinking about creating a family and building that and all the things that come with having a home and so but I was so busy I kept procrastinating on packing and I kept putting it off and I remember when moving day came finally came around I found found myself there at 12 a.m. by myself for like I said second-story apartment it's Sunday night workday is coming somebody lives underneath me and I remember just being worn out and wondering why in the world that I wait this long and so but I remember man when there was one piece of furniture left it's 12 a.m. and it's a Kmart nightstand I don't know if you've had the experience of owning any Kmart furniture but I feel like in the building process there are pretty much like this they're like you know what nails screws that kind of stuff why would you need why would you use that let's use some Elmer's glue Elmer's glue that's awesome let's hold this thing together and so I remember picking up this nightstand 12 a.m. second story and taking one step down the steps and this thing implodes and shoots down the stairs and just boom boom boom and just being mortified it my name my downstairs neighbor is trying to sleep she's it's Monday morning the next day and I was just like what in the world and so but it reminded me also man that I was just so passionate about this cause of moving and getting to a new house but I never did anything to prepare for it and it reminds me of our culture and how everyone is passionate about a cause but when it comes down to it do you actually do anything to support it see we live in a time where there is six hundred and twenty million Facebook groups that you can join many of them calls oriented but you can update your profile picture with a banner but you can actually never do anything to physically support that cause it's all about that outward appearance and it's not about the physical fruit that is produced and so we tell ourselves things like one day I'll serve in our church one day I'm gonna help the vulnerable this task seems so overwhelming where do I even start caring for the vulnerable we live in a culture that is calls oriented but there is a lack of fortitude and perseverance and so as Avery has already stated our big idea for today is wise families care for the vulnerable and to do that I believe that we need to see who the vulnerable is in our context and so let's go ahead and read verse 11 again it says this rescue those who are being taken away to death hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter and so if you look at this I believe that this verse really breaks up the vulnerable into two different groups of people the first one is this the first part of that verse it says rescue those who were being taken away to death this verse is showing us here that there's a group of people in our society today who are being taken away to death against their will and there is nothing that you can do there's nothing that they can do to stop it they're being forcibly taken to death it says and so I want you to think for a second who in our context could this be who might this be that this verse is speaking about and I think I mean there is multiple applications here that we can apply this to you probably have multiple you that you're thinking through right now in your mind but I think one of them has to be the unborn those that are made in the image of God and loved by him those that have intrinsic and eternal value we must rescue those that can't rescue themselves that we have to do that and so secondly though in that verse I think we need to turn our attention to the second part of verse 11 where it says hold back those who are stumbling and so this suggests that there's a second group of people who were stumbling towards the slaughter and this shows that they're not being forced to death like the first group but they're unknowingly going that they're going this way and so this is like you think about it to illustrate this you think about somebody I don't know if you've seen this in your neighborhood downtown Greensboro other places somebody glued to their cell phone as they're walking down the street I don't know if you've ever seen any of those YouTube videos or other things where you see people looking at their phone and they're running into polls and they're just just keep going and have no idea what's going on it's and it's it's funny to us that way but this is what this passage is showing us that these people are unknowing about the dangers around them that they're going haphazardly that they don't know what they're going into the slaughter and so I want you again to think about who this might be in our context as well who might this be and I believe this one one group that we could apply this to is the unreached that they have no idea that people around the world that have never heard the name of Jesus Christ have no idea that there's a Savior that gave their life for him that loved them and that right now that they are stumbling into an eternity apart from Jesus and apart from the God that loved them that died for them and so from the triad to the nation's that we need to rescue those that are being taken off to the slaughter by sending our best around the world we know that God is forming a people from every tribe every tongue and every nation and we want to see people come to know Jesus Christ and step from the slaughter to the Savior and so God is calling us to care for the vulnerable because he cares for the vulnerable he sees the widow he sees the hurting he sees the oppressed apart from Christ we are all vulnerable we have to realize that as Avery put we are helpless and hopeless without a Savior but praise God Jesus secured your rescue through his vulnerability amen and so lastly what I want you all to see today is this that ignorance is not an excuse in this that ignorance is not an excuse for us verse 12 says if you say behold we did not know this does not he who weighs the heart perceive it does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it and will he not repay man according to his work verse 12 anticipates an objection that some people might raise who didn't know or tried to explain that they didn't know that people were being taken away and so people are gonna say well I didn't know that people are the injustices were taking place in our world that I didn't know that about the unborn that I didn't know about these things and so and we it's it's really easy for us to get caught up in our own little world that we go to work we come home we play with our family and we hang out with them and then we do the same thing over and over and over again and we never we get so caught up in that that we never engage the vulnerable I mean we never pray for the nation's we never go because we're so caught up in this little world but we have to realize that ignorance is not an excuse especially in the information age social media inundates us with opportunities far more than 20 years ago when you saw the occasional save the wells bumper stickers or saw or saw the Sarah McLaughlin commercials in the arms of an angel playing in the background thinking about puppies and so we were asked like this hashtag that like this put this badge on your profile picture in about a million different things and in the information age ignorance is a choice we are far more aware of social injustices homelessness criminal reform so much so that we become numb to all these important issues or even if we aren't numb by it we are so overwhelmed to the point that we turn inward and we focus only on our family but church we must remember that God he's not ignorant to the vulnerable man throughout Scripture in Exodus we see the cries of God's people they cry out to him and what does God do he rescues them man he loves them he supports them and so throughout Scripture we see this in your own line in your own lives I hope that you've seen this that that God responds to our cries and that he is not ignorant ignorant to the suffering going on in our world today and he is not ignorant to the suffering in your life or my life and so I love this quote in the ESV study Bible it says this the one who embraces wisdom can never be content with merely seeking the well-being of himself or of his family he will also seek justice as widely as he can so I want to ask you today church is this the heart is this your heart as a family are these the kind of things that you were thinking about are your kids growing up ignorant to the vulnerable around them are your kids watching you engage your neighbors are your kids watching watching you pray for the nation's are your kids watching you go on mission trips together and serve together in our community or are they watching you set up comfort for them and comfort for yourselves if we are to be wise families we must seek justice and care for the vulnerable if we believe as we've talked about in this series that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge then we must what be wise and care for those that his heart is bound to and so we have seen that God's heart is bound to the vulnerable we have seen that that got who the vulnerable might be in our context and now we should be asking the next question is how do we help them appropriately and so I want to go ahead and pass this off to Josiah to talk about how do we help them well let me start by saying a huge thank you to Avery and Michael and a huge thank you to you Mercy Hill Church for allowing me the opportunity to bring the conclusion of today's passage to you it is an honor to share the stage with these men and it's an honor to be able to bring the Word of God to you for just a few minutes just a quick intro of myself my name is Josiah Rothless Berger pronounced fancy okay Berger not burger but if you know me you know that I respond to anything that's close in the ballpark and I know what you're out there thinking sheesh that is a mouthful it is a mouthful and this is one way that I know my wife loves me very much that she was willing to take on my last name when we got married just a year ago so Avery and Michael have done most of the legwork for us Avery has talked about why we step in and care for the vulnerable Michael has shared with us who they are and I have the opportunity to share how we care for the vulnerable so we go back to verse 10 verse 10 if you faint in the day of adversity your strength is small and we do live in a day of adversity don't we there is adversity all around us we see brokenness all over our world and as we've already heard we tend to be a culture we really do who likes to talk the talk but we're not so great at walking the walk right we are a culture with many causes yet without fortitude or as the great theologian Mike Tyson once put it everyone has a game plan until they get punched in the face yeah in the middle of so much adversity this passage calls us as God's people to step in in strength and to care for the vulnerable we are to rescue those who are being taken away to death and we are to hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter we see two groups of people here we see those who are being taken away to an unjustified death as we heard from Michael and there are more categories here but certainly the unborn right those who need our care and protection as we step in and care for them and then we also see those who through foolish behavior are stumbling to destruction Proverbs 7 gives us a picture of what this looks like it it shows us a young man who is enticed by sexual activity he shouldn't be involved in and it says this it says he goes as an ox goes to the slaughter he does not know that it will cost him his life so we are called as the people of God to recognize where foolish behavior is happening and step in and hold those people back from destruction and and Michael pointed out the unreached earlier and and I want to camp out here for for one moment because in in our day in in 2022 there are still over 2 billion people without access to the gospel and we're not talking about people who just don't know Jesus as their Savior or don't want to go to church we're talking about people who couldn't hear the gospel if they wanted to and there's a story I wanted to share with you I remember a time where I was I was backpacking through some villages in the mountains of South Asia and and we came to a village and and everyone in the village gathered together and we started to have a conversation about the gospel with them we started asking them what they knew about Jesus and the leader of the village paused me and he said hold on hold on what's Jesus he said what's Jesus did you catch that he didn't say who's Jesus he said what's Jesus as if we were there to sell him their village a product or something they didn't know that Jesus was a person that he was God who became man to lay down his life for them billions of people living in this reality and yet as we as we look at these two groups of people those who are being taken away to an unjustified death and those who through foolish behavior or ignorance or stumbling to the slaughter we inherently know in our hearts that we're supposed to do something right we know this you know how I know this is because there are so many causes championed by people who don't even know God fighting for things like food and security criminal reform okay orphans addictions substance abuse we see it all over yeah here's what we know we know that these causes are so so hard to address we see something our hearts break and rightfully so we we launch into action but as soon as we do we realize who that's tough that's tough we hit bureaucracy and red tape and many times we are revealed for our strength being small our strength being limited and we faint when we hit adversity and God's Word gives us the tools that we need to fight adversity when we hit it as we care for the vulnerable but here's my fear even with a passage like this as we step into application here's my fear that there is such a clear application point to this test text to rescue and to hold back that will immediately jump into action and we will only apply this proverb to our actions before we apply it to our hearts and when we do that we are revealed to be the same as our culture a culture with a cause and without fortitude because we shrink when we hit adversity so we're gonna be a culture with a cause and fortitude here's how we do it the first thing we do is we turn first to Jesus for our strength in adversity how do we do that we pause and we remember that before we knew Jesus as our Savior we were the vulnerable we were those who needed to be rescued and held back from walking into the slaughter to destruction and as we pause and as we remember as we remember that we remember that then we and the strength that Jesus provides because he what he did for us can step into caring properly for the vulnerable we have to become weak so that Jesus can be strong in us 2nd Corinthians 12 10 tells us this for when I am weak then I am strong how's this possible how can we be weak and then strong it's because when we become weak and we're stripped of the things that we think make us strong like maybe our physical strength maybe it is our intelligence or our wisdom or our charisma whatever it may be when we are stripped of that then we can rely on the true strength that Jesus provides and this doesn't it doesn't just happen this comes through our daily rhythms of Bible reading and prayer and engaging with community so that when adversity comes we rely on the strength Jesus provides in fact to go back to what Mike Tyson said this is our game plan for when we do get punched in the face and our second application point is this we walk with Jesus in caring for the vulnerable we walk with Jesus in caring for the vulnerable and I'm aware we've talked about it we we look at our world and we see brokenness all over the place that we think gosh I don't even know where to start I don't even know where I would begin and and let me say this if you're if you're in this room and you feel this pool on your heart to step off the sidelines and into the game of caring for the vulnerable let me encourage you to dive full in at this church at Mercy Hill and here's why there are families all across this church who are bucking this stereotype of fainting when adversity comes and they are caring for the unborn and they are involved in adoption and foster care and taking the gospel to the nations if you want to step off the sidelines and into the game of caring for the vulnerable this is a place where you'll learn how to do it so maybe your next step is to attend the weekender that's coming up or to get plugged into a community because whenever you're plugged into community you can rely on the strength that Jesus provides and you can be buoyed by the people of God around you in order to step in and care for the vote for the vulnerable and let me take a moment to conclude like this I am aware that across all our campuses and locations that that there are people here this weekend who do not yet know Jesus as their Savior I know that's true I know there's people across all our campuses and locations that don't know Jesus yet and you may have grown up in a religious environment or you may be a church for the first time and you hear a message like this and you say all right I'm gonna do it I'm gonna jump in I'm gonna care for the vulnerable I'm gonna rescue those who need to rescue it I'm gonna help and what I would say to you is you need to take a step back and realize that you yourself need to be rescued that you yourself need to recognize that you've never repented of your sin and put your faith in Jesus as your Savior and you can't step in and rescue others until you've allowed Jesus to rescue you and so across all campuses and locations if that's you if that's the position you're in let me plead with you to make this the weekend that you place your faith in Jesus and you can do that through a simple prayer that you say in your heart you can even walk through this with me right now it's very simple the first thing you do is you admit to Jesus that that you're a sinner and there is nothing that you can do to save yourself and then you believe you believe that that Jesus has done everything necessary to save you and you confess him as the Lord of your life to live with him forever if that's you this weekend and you've maybe done that in your heart or you're feeling the pool to do that let me encourage you we're gonna have a prayer team up front at all of our campuses there will be a prayer team up front that you can come up to and say now I said that in my heart or I feel like God's working on me and I need to repent to my sin and put my faith in Jesus someone will be here to counsel you to pray with you and if you're you're with us and you're like I need to jump off the sidelines and into the game of caring for the vulnerable your action step is the same come forward talk with someone we would love to help you get plugged into the ways that you can serve the vulnerable right here at our church bow your heads and pray with me as I close Jesus thank you thank you that though we were vulnerable you stepped into our brokenness and endured the cross despite despising the shame for our salvation now that you bought salvation for us I pray across all of our campuses and locations for those who need to repent of their sin for the first time that they would put their faith in you this weekend I pray across the triad that you would raise up families to serve the vulnerable in our city and around the world in Jesus name amen