Hi, I'm David Bercot. In another session of Ask David Bercot anything about the early Christians. And the question this week was on charitable giving called alms giving in the King James and in most of the early Christian writings. This is the question that was submitted.
I'm quoting, " He says, " For as long as I've been a Christian, I have wrestled between the commands of Jesus about the poor, which the early Christians took seriously, and the views of my family and worldly Christians who cite the abuse of charity by homeless addicts and the swindling of those who beg, saying, " No good deed goes unpunished. " The tension was brought to a head when I helped a former coworker who turned out dishonest about where the money was going. Okay, this is a very good question.
We're going to look at a couple of early Christian quotations on this, but you are correct. They give a lot of teaching about helping the poor. Jesus gave a lot of teaching about helping the poor. So we should be setting aside money regularly and have some kind of plan in place that we are giving to the poor, not just giving to our church and to pay for the church building and for electricity and things like that. We need to do that.
It is a responsibility if we're going to have meeting places that we support those as a church member. But what Jesus talks about in Matthew 25 is I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. And he's not talking about someone who had a nice meal at lunch and now it's five o'clock and he's hungry and is wanting something to have you know another meal.
The hungry in his day were people who had nothing to eat or next to nothing and would likely starve if people did not give them food. Likewise, the thirsty isn't someone like today, " Oh, yeah, I haven't drank anything in the last 20 minutes. I'm thirsty. " No, this is people who don't literally have any water, who are in a situation where they're going to die of thirst or they are suffering badly.
And that's where our emphasis should be giving because we live in such a different society in the United States where we don't have people who are truly going to starve if we don't give them food or who are truly going to die of thirst if we don't provide water for them. Okay, so you've pointed out the dilemma that we've all thought about. I think the starting point is to recognize that there are several commandments and principles that apply to alms giving or to charitable giving.
Now, Matthew 5:42, where Jesus said, " Give it to him who asks, " that's only one of the principles. Jesus gives two more principles in the Sermon on the Mount that affect giving. So when we treat Matthew 5:42 as though it was the only commandment about giving, we make the same mistake as those churches today who treat Romans 13 as if it's the only commandment about our relationship to earthly governments. And those churches, they say based on Romans 13, they say, well, we have to go to war.
If our country commands us to become a soldier and go to war, well, Paul says to obey the secular authorities. Well, I'm sorry, but there are other commandments in the New Testament. That's not the only one that pertains to our relationship to Caesar. Jesus said, " Give Caesar's things to Caesar, but God's things to God. " And the apostles told the Jewish rulers, " We must obey God as ruler rather than men.
" So it's never right to take just one commandment or one theological teaching of Scripture and treat it as if it was the only thing on that subject if there are other commandments or other doctrinal teachings on that same subject. So when we think of Matthew 5:42, the Scripture that says, " Give to Him who asks, " we should remember that there are always many people asking. It's not just the person who's right there on the street in front of us. And for each Christian, our resources are limited.
Even if we are an extremely wealthy Christian, we can't literally help everyone out there who is asking. When we give to one person, we invariably end up choosing not to give to somebody else. Let me explain. Okay, so I subscribed to CAM, which stands for Christian Aid Ministries. And we get a newsletter each month, my wife and I, and it sets forth different needs around the world. If you're not familiar with Christian aid ministries, I would encourage you to look them up on the internet.
CAM is their initials, but their website is probably Christian Aid Ministries. I'm not sure. I didn't look it up. One thing I like about them is they have lots of ministries all around the globe, and much of their work is done by volunteers. The ones who do get paid are not paid huge salaries. So a huge portion I haven't looked recently, but it used to be like 90% somewhere in that range went actually to the people in need, not to overhead and to fundraising and that kind of thing.
Now, every ministry has a certain amount for overhead, and it's right to support that. But it's also good to make sure that we're not mainly giving to Americans or to fundraising, that we're actually giving to the hungry. So you know if you're not Anabaptist, you might not be familiar with Christian aid ministries. I would encourage you to whatever ministry you want to support, find one that's really helping the people who are starving.
There are people in this world, usually in war zones or places affected by war where people are literally starving or literally don't have water to drink. It has to be trucked in from afar and that they are often thirsty. So when we're giving, you know, I personally, that's where I want my giving to go. On judgment day, I want someone to be able to come up to me and through supernatural knowledge, know that, " Oh, thank you. You provided money. I was starving and you gave me something to eat.
" Or maybe the way it'll work out, they'll never know who gave it, and that's fine. Jesus will know. That's the important thing. I want him to know whether that person ever knows or not. But when we give to people like in Sudan or something like that, it's going to make the difference between whether a widow or orphaned children or maybe a family, whether they're going to eat or not that day or maybe at all. OK, so yes, we can give to him who asked. But remember, there's a lot of people asking.
So it's still a matter of discerning who we're going to give to because we're not going to be able to give to all of them. If I give to Americans, I'm not going to have very much left over or maybe nothing to give to people in other parts of the world who are asking, but they're not here in front of me. In the same Sermon on the Mount, Jesus also commanded, and I'm quoting from Matthew 6:3 through 4.
He said, " When you do a charitable deed or when you give alms, " as some translations say, " Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret. " Okay, so when we have an American in front of us who is in no danger of starving, and in most cases, they're asking because they choose not to work, why would we give to the American rather than to that orphan or widow over in Sudan or in Syria or whatever country it might be where people are literally starving?
Why would we do that? Why would we give to someone who's not starving and not give to this one who is starving? The reason I think if we examine ourselves is because this American is standing right there in front of us asking. And he knows whether we give to him or not. We have to just either look the other way and walk past him, or we have to say no. He knows. We're not giving to him in secret. He knows whether we give to him or not.
In contrast, the person over in Sudan or Syria or wherever people are starving because of war or famine or for other reasons, they will never know in this life that we help them. They may not even know in the life to come. Our giving to that person truly is in secret. So why would we choose the American over the starving widow, which most of us have done in one way or another?
If we're honest, isn't it because we're ignoring this commandment about giving in secret that we're embarrassed to say no to this American, we would rather go ahead and give to them and not give to the person on the other end of the world who is starving because they know we're giving that widow doesn't know. We're not giving in secret. So that is a principle to keep in mind in all of this. In the same Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, " Do not give what is holy to the dogs nor cast your pearls before swine.
" Now, in general, or probably the main application of that principle is sharing the gospel. But kingdom money is also holy. Jesus wants us to give generously, but He also wants us to use discernment. So following this commandment, this is also a commandment in the Sermon on the Mount, we should never waste precious kingdom resources. We want to make sure we're not giving what is holy to the dogs or casting our pearls before swine. Okay.
Finally, Matthew 5:42 that is give to him who asks needs to be counterbalanced with 2 Thessalonians 3 verses 10 through 13. I think we all know those verses. Maybe we can't quote them you know by chapter and verse. But there are Paul writes. I'm going to read it. He said, " For even when we were with you, we commanded you this. If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.
" So what was happening was that those freeloading Christians in Thessalonica were asking the other Christians to clothe them and to feed them, to house them maybe, but they were refusing to work. So rather than giving to those Christians who were asking, I mean, they were asking, but Paul didn't say, " Well, okay, give to him who ask. " And so these brothers and sisters who don't want to work, go ahead and give to them. He said, no, if they don't want to work, then let them go hungry.
Paul was not going to give what was holy to the dogs. So again, we have another scriptural commandment to counterbalance the one Jesus gave in Matthew 5:42. We don't ignore Matthew 5:42 and just follow 2 Thessalonians, but neither do we just follow Matthew 5:42 and ignore Thessalonians or ignore Matthew 7:6 or Matthew, the one about giving in secret, Matthew 6: 3 through 4. So these are all the principles. We should always remember that.
Now, Jesus also gave us the commandment, be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. So being a Christian doesn't mean being gullible. We should be discerning in all aspects of our Christian lives. Now here, being wise would pertain to being scammed that if we let ourselves be scammed and not every American who ask is necessarily scamming us. Most people aren't. But sometimes they are. And if we're not careful and we let ourselves be scammed, we're not being wise as serpents.
And again, the money that goes to a scammer generally is going to come out of the giving we might have done sending money to some Christian ministry that is helping people who are literally starving or are literally thirsty or maybe are in prison or something like that. Now let me just ask you the question. Did Jesus give to everyone who asked? Now your inclination might be, well, yeah, Jesus said give to him who asked. Jesus would have given to everyone who asked. Well, the answer is no, he did not.
He himself used discernment when he gave. Now, I don't know that he gave a lot of alms. We don't read very much about that. Instead, he gave by healing people and performing miracles that benefited people is the giving that we mainly read about. Now, Jesus had all of the energy of this universe at his disposal. So he literally could have given to everyone who asked him. Like I say, we have finite resources, so we can't literally give to everyone, but Jesus could.
Yet on multiple occasions, he refused to give to those who asked. One example would be the Canaanite woman who asked him to deliver her daughter from demon possession. Now, that wouldn't have cost Jesus anything to do that. As far as we know, he had the energy, the miraculous ability. Boom, he could have just delivered her. But his first response was to turn down her request. And he gave her a very blunt response that would have offended most people.
Most people would have walked away after what he said to them that it's not right to give what is holy or to give what belongs to the children to the dogs. Yet this Canaanite woman persisted. And so Jesus eventually did give to her. But you see, he tested her first before he gave. If she had not passed the test, her daughter would not have been healed. The scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 12, they asked Jesus for a sign, something he could have easily done. But he turned down the request. Why?
Because they were insincere. He wasn't going to cast his pearls before swine. Similarly, when the crowd who had received the miraculous bread and fish, when they followed Jesus across the Sea of Galilee, they were seeking more free food. And he refused to give it to them. He told them that their hearts were in the wrong place. He rebuked them, and he delivered a hard teaching to them that stumbled most of them, certainly many of them, if not most.
So Jesus Himself did not apply the principle of give to Him who ask in an indiscriminate manner. He tested people and he used discernment. So we should give generously, but it is not wrong to use discernment. We have the example of Jesus Himself. So when someone tries to scam us, and now I'm moving from just somebody begging to someone trying to scam us, which often they are, usually it's through email or texting, or sometimes it's over the phone.
I mean, I don't know how many people call our phone with some kind of scam. Now, see, those people, it's relatively easy to turn down. I mean, if it's on the phone, I usually just hang up. I ignore it if it's an email. I send it to the garbage can icon there on my screen. However, when the scammer or it may be a drug addict, when they confront us in person, it's awkward to expose them or to turn down their request.
And again, also, you know that principle of wanting to not give in secret, I mean, we maybe want to give in secret, but when we're in a situation that our giving is either if we give in secret, they're going to think we turn them down. We generally want to be seen as giving. Also, most of us can't think of what to say on the spot. When someone comes to us and we suspect it's not sincere, I know I'm terrible at thinking right off the top of my head of what to say in that situation.
So that's why what I've done is already think out what I want to say in advance to people who come to me here in America with either a scam or they're lying about their needs or they simply don't want to work. Now, for example, in the situation of a scammer, that doesn't come up real often, but it does come up. People tell you something that is not at all true. I've had it actually happen to me where a person came to me and was directly lying.
And the reason I knew they were lying is that they had scammed me the day before I had given to them believing their story. The day before they wanted to do work well, I'll just tell you the story. So this young teenager who had Christian parents, I knew the family. He ran away from home. He lived about, I think, 70 miles, maybe 100 from where my wife and I lived. And he was trying to he took his parents ' car and then he was trying to get to our house. And he made it to our town, but then his car broke down.
And then these scammers, they pretended, well, they called themselves Christians. They had you know war crosses. They had long hair. I mean, they didn't look the way I think a Christian should look. But anyway, they came to him and said they had a repair shop and you know they could fix his car. They opened the hood and they said, oh, it's your alternator has gone out.
So they asked where he was headed and they took him to our house and they said, you know it was going to cost so much money, $175, whatever it was, and they would put a new alternator on his car. And you know they gave me a story that you know they were Christians and all of this. So I went ahead and gave them the money to fix the car. And the next day, they brought the car over to our house. And I thanked him and everything, and we did all this, you know Jesus, you know bless you, and that kind of thing.
Well, then the very next day, well, it turned out they didn't, after they left, one of us, either the young man or myself, we opened the hood. They were already gone. And we looked in there. I wanted to see the new alternator. And it still had the old alternator. I knew that because there was a, it's called a mud dauber. It's a kind of wasp in Texas that built a nest out of mud. And it had a mud daubers nest on that, meaning it was the old one that had been there. You could tell it was old.
So they never put in an alternator. Who knows? It may have just been out of gas or some little thing. And they basically stole the money. Well, the next day, it was at nighttime. My wife has gone in to get milk at a grocery store. I'm sitting in the car and this guy comes up to my window and asks for money. He says, my car has broken down up the highway several miles. He said, I don't know anything about cars. I don't know what to do. You know Could you give me some money so I can you know try to hire a mechanic?
Well, he didn't recognize me because I was in a different setting, but I recognized him. And I started to just really rebuke him. I thought, you know, I'm sitting here at night in a fairly empty parking lot. This guy could get violent. So I just simply said, no, I'm sorry I can't help you and left it at that. But it was sort of funny, but I realized I had been scammed the day before. So it made me think about what to say. Now, like I say, I didn't know the day before.
I would probably still fall for such a scam today. Sometimes you can't know. But I thought it out in my mind that the next time, if I know it's a scam or I suspect it, I'm going to say, just because I'm a Christian doesn't mean I'm gullible. You and I both know that what you're saying is untrue. What you need is not money. You need Jesus Christ because Jesus changes lives, lives like yours and lives like mine. Would you like to hear how Jesus has changed my life? I mean, that's just an example.
You listeners can maybe think of something better to say. But what I'm saying is it's good to think out what you want to say in certain situations so that either you're not scammed or you don't give money unwisely to someone who almost certainly is going to waste it on drugs or alcohol. Well, you might say, well, does it do any harm?
You know If I give money to a scammer or I give to somebody who's really just a drug addict, they're going to spend it on drugs, or they're just simply, let's say, what we call them in the past, a bum. Someone who doesn't want to work. They'd rather just live off of other people. Well, it might seem like there's no harm in that because, hey, we follow Jesus ' command to give to him who ask. But have we been as wise as serpents? Or instead, have we cast our pearls before swine?
Have we followed Jesus ' commandment to give in secret, to not let our right hand know what our left hand was doing? Or instead, have we given because we know we are giving in public? Maybe other people don't see it, but this person knows that we have or have not given. Now, the harm when it comes to scammers, and again, we all fall for them because sometimes we don't realize that's what they are. Scammers prey on society.
Every time someone falls for a scam, it enriches the scammer financially, and it encourages them to continue in their corrupt and illegal practices. As a result, more honest people are going to be bilked out of their money. In contrast, if no one fell for scams, well, then con artists would be forced to turn to honest work. In other words, when we give to a scammer, we become an enabler. And the same, it's true when we give to drug addicts or just plain bums who don't want to work. We should use discretion.
Now, I will say it is better to err on the side of giving to someone who is unworthy than to refuse someone who we think is unworthy. And it turns out there was a true need there. Like I said, I'd rather give to five unworthy people, 10 unworthy people, than to turn down one person who actually was in need, even though maybe they were an American, but they were in a truly desperate situation. I mean, I'll just give an example.
I remember there was this woman who was at a stoplight and when the light would turn red, you know she would come out, she had a bucket or something there you know in your lane. So I got out of the car while the light was red and I asked her what her situation was. And she said that her husband was I was in Texas. She said her husband was in prison up in Arkansas. It was Thanksgiving, the Thanksgiving weekend, and she wanted to get up there to be able to visit him, but she had no money.
And you know I immediately opened my wallet and tried to give generously to her. Now, I realized years later, as I got more experience dealing with people like that, that probably there was a 95% chance that she was lying through her teeth. But again, I'm not sorry I gave her the money. It might have been true, and even if it wasn't, I would rather have made the mistake on the side of giving to him who asks.
On the other hand, there was a family who was always sitting there at Walmart asking for money, the Walmart where we shopped there in the same town. And one day my wife happened to be there at 5:30 or 6: 00, whenever it was, you know, they would apparently get dropped off early in the morning. They would sit out there and they look pretty pitiful. It was a woman with, you know, some children. And my wife happened to be there later in the day.
Like I say, I want to say it's about 5:30, but it might have been a different time. And this very expensive car, you know, a Cadillac Mercedes, something like that, drives up and picks them up, and they all pile in the car and take off. And we realized, wow, they weren't poor at all. In fact, there was an article in the newspaper who traced a lot of these people, and a lot of them were fairly well off, living better off of bilking people by pretending to be needy than so many working-class Americans were.
So we should always remember our charitable giving, our resources are limited. Let's make sure we're giving wisely, not neglecting the people who are truly hungry, who are truly thirsty, who are actually in prison, or are actually sick with great medical needs, that we're helping them, the ones Jesus specifically talks about in Matthew 25. Because again, it's always easier to say no to those people because they're on the other side of the world and to end up giving to an American who really doesn't have great need.
Okay, you've heard a lot of David Bercot, and these questions are to be about what the early church has to say. Well, you see both principles enunciated by the early church, one of giving generously and giving to him who asked. So the letter of Barnabas says, " Do not be ready to stretch forth your hands to receive while you draw them back when it comes to giving. You shall not hesitate to give nor complain when you give. Give to everyone who asked you.
" Okay, so that was one teaching you see throughout the early Christian writings. A lot of emphasis on giving to the poor. And anything I've said in no way reduces the need to give to the poor. I've only been saying use discernment so that you can do the most good with the money you are giving. Now, the Didache says this. If one having need receives alms, he is without guilt. However, if someone receives alms who does not have a need, he will pay the penalty.
He will be examined concerning the things that he has done, and he shall not escape from there until he pays back the last coin, he's quoting there from the Sermon on the Mount. The Didache continues, " Now concerning this, it has been said, let your alms sweat in your hands until you know to whom you should give them. " Now, apparently that was a Proverbs. That's not in Scripture, but apparently it was a Proverb perhaps among the early Christians. Again, not discussing generosity, but discernment.
You know Let your alms sweat in your palms. Have your alms ready, but use discernment. Make sure you're giving them to who really needs them. OK, so I'll stop there with those two basic balancing principles.
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