GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT – GIFT OF HELPS
DR. JIM DIXON
OCTOBER 27, 1935
LUKE 10:25-S7
Her name was Elizabeth Lee. She was only 11 years old. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska. A few years ago, she placed her little hand inside of a lion’s cage at an amusement park in Anchorage, and a 300-pound lioness named Cleo took hold of that little girl’s hand and began to chew. A state trooper whose name was Frank Johnson was there and he saw it, and he not thinking of himself—just rushed into the enclosure to try to free the little girl’s hand—and in the ensuing panic he realized he would have to shoot the lion. He took out his gun, He fired two shots. He killed the lion but in the confusion, he realized he had also shot the 11-year-old girl in the leg. A few months later Elizabeth Lee was restored to health and she was whole, but her parents decided to sue. They decided to sue the amusement park because the enclosure was not well protected and to sue the state trooper, Frank Johnson, for his carelessness. The courts decided that the amusement park would have to give the family of Elizabeth Lee $15,000, because they had been irresponsible in the way they set up the enclosure, but they exonerated Frank Johnson because of a statute the State of Alaska has called the Good Samaritan Statute, and that statute states that “any person who sincerely is seeking to help another person in distress, if there is some subsequent damage that occurs, that person who is helping is not liable unless it can be proven that he has participated in gross negligence.”
Now there’s many other states that also have good Samaritan statutes and they have these laws because good Samaritans need to be protected. I think people realize there’s just not enough good Samaritans in this world. Not enough people who are willing to help other people who are in need and in affliction. This morning I want to share with you briefly about helping other people. I want to share with you regarding the subject of the Gift of Helps. The Greek word for helps is the word “antilymphus.” It’s a word which literally means to take the place of, and in the Bible, it was used of a person who was willing to take another person’s burdens, a person who was willing to carry another person’s burdens—a person who was willing to bear another person’s afflictions. The Gift of Helps refers to a person who reaches out and seeks to help the needy and the afflicted. The Gift of Helps is different than the Gift of Service. The Gift of Service does not necessarily focus on the needy or the afflicted. The Gift of Helps is also different than the Gift of Mercy. As we see next week, the Gift of Mercy is normally tied to a ministry of forgiveness, but the Gift of Helps simply focuses on the needy and the afflicted. I have three short teachings this morning and the first teaching is this: this gift is rooted in compassion. It is motivated by compassion.
When Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan, He told how a man took the Jericho Road from Jerusalem to Jericho, a road 17 miles long, a road that descended more than 3,000 feet in those 17 miles, a road that was laden with robbers and thieves. Jesus said that this man was beaten up by robbers, stripped and left half dead by the side of the road. He said a priest came along, saw the afflicted, wounded man there and just passed right on by. Then a Levite came, another religious leader and he saw the afflicted man and he, too, just passed right on by. He did not help, but a Samaritan, half-breed, looked down upon by the Jewish nation, he came down that road and he saw the wounded man and the Lord Jesus said, “he was moved with compassion.” You see, helping ministries begin when there is compassion in the heart.
In La Pinata, California not too far from where I grew up, there is a little church called the Church of the Lighted Window and the pastor there today is a man named Phillip Anderson. Phil has a sister who is the head of the children’s division of a major Southern California hospital. She called Phil up one day and said, “why don’t you come over to the hospital. I would like to show you around the children’s division where I work.” Phil said okay and as they began to walk around the hospital, as they walked down the corridors, Phil could hear a little child crying, screaming, obviously in considerable pain, either physically or emotionally or perhaps a combination of both, and the more they walked around, the louder it got and as they walked down this one corridor, it was obvious that they were coming to the room that this little child was in. They went into the little room and Phil could see the child and it was a 1-year-old girl and she looked horrible. She had bruises, and scratches and scars from the tips of her toes to the top of her head. Phil thought maybe she’d been in a horrible accident. Phil’s sister explained to him that this child had not been in an accident. This child was a victim. A victim not of strangers but a victim of her own parents. This child had suffered child abuse and there were obscenities and gross words written all up and down this child, this 1-year-old’s arms and legs, cigarette burns and scars on the bottom of the feet and on other parts of the body.
If you want a graphic illustration of how life’s basic relationships can be perverted, if you would like a graphic illustration of what the Living God is upon against in this fallen world, go to a hospital and take a look at some children who have suffered child abuse. When Phil looked at this little 1-year-old girl, he said he just wanted to leave the hospital. He felt sick in his stomach, but he turned and he looked at his sister and he saw tears coming down her face. She was crying openly and she reached down to touch this girl and as she touched the little girl, the girl began to scream even louder because she had learned to be suspicious of any human touch. But Phil’s sister lifted this little girl up and a beautiful thing happened. As she began to hold this little girl close to herself and pat the little girl on the back and whisper in the little girl’s ear, the little girl began to calm down, and her hands, her little hands, took hold of Phil’s sister and held on tight. And as the minutes passed, only a few minutes, this little girl fell fast asleep. That kind of ministry is not unusual for Phil’s sister. She ministers to children all over the children’s division of that hospital, children who are needy and children who are afflicted. She does that because in her heart she has compassion—compassion which motivates her to reach out and touch afflicted people.
The Greek word for compassion, actually there are a number of Greek words, the word “sum pathos” from which we get the word sympathy. It’s a word that literally means to “suffer with.” A person who has compassion, a person who has the Gift of Helps is a person who feels another person’s pain. If you don’t have the Gift of Helps and if you’re not a particularly compassionate person, you can become more compassionate if you begin to pray sincerely and ask the Lord to give you that kind of a heart. This world needs a lot more compassion.
You know, as you go through the gospels and you look at Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, whenever you see Jesus confronted by an afflicted person, a needy person, time and again the Bible says, “Jesus was moved with compassion.” It’s the basis of helping ministries.
The second teaching this morning is this, the Gift of Helps is expressed in action. It’s an active gift. It’s not static. It’s dynamic. It moves beyond compassion to action. The priest walked by the affilicted man on the Jericho road and so did the Levite. We don’t really know what was in their heart. The Bible doesn’t say whether they felt something or whether they didn’t. Whether they had compassion, sorrow, whether they felt that person’s pain—we do not know. But whatever they felt, it was not sufficient to motivate them to action. And you see, a person who has the Gift of Helps is a person who steps forth and allows their faith to be expressed in works.
When I was in seminary thirteen years ago, I weighed almost 240 pounds. I was eating a lot of food and I was enjoying it a lot. I really didn’t think of myself getting fat, I thought of myself as getting kind of big. I think the reason I didn’t think of myself as getting fat was because I was lifting weights. I was lifting a lot of weights. This was in Pasadena, California, and five days, a week I’d go to the Y.M.C.A. and I would lift Olympic weights, free weights, but once in a while, I would use the universal machine, particularly for leg work. One particular day, I was there in the weight room and I was sitting down on the universal machine and there’s pedals that you push down. You drive the pedals down and it drives the rack of weights up on the other side. I had 400 pounds of weights on the rack and I was driving the pedals down and I was going to do that until it burned, and at 400 pounds, it didn’t take many repetitions for it to burn. Somehow the pedal slipped toward the end of my foot and I was like pushing with my toes and when I’d almost driven the pedals down, my feet slipped off, and the 400 pounds came crashing down. It drove the pedals up and it drove one pedal right into my right shin, and that pedal just drove right up my shin, stripping it to the bone for seven or eight inches. I left part of my leg in the pedal. I looked down and I could see the white bone of my leg for seven or eight inches, and I was in shock. I didn’t know what to do. I looked over and there were some other guys in the weight room doing various exercises, some of them were looking in the mirror. They looked over at me. They couldn’t help but notice what had happened, but they were just grossed out and they turned away. I got up and I was kind of disoriented. I remember I had to get help. I started walking out of there by myself. I walked out into the gymnasium which you had to pass through in order to go down to the locker room. As I walked through the gym, there were some games going on—pick-up games—5 on 5 half-court, and there were some guys standing along the side of the gym waiting to challenge the winning team. Many of them looked over and they saw me. By this time the blood was just pourin g down my leg and nobody came. I continued limping on down the stairs. I began to get dizzy and I knew I was going to faint. As I got down into the locker room, the physical therapist there came running towards me. He helped me sit down, he called the hospital, an ambulance came, I was rushed to the hospital, they did surgery or whatever they did—stitching on my leg. In retrospect, days later, weeks later, as I looked back on that event, I found myself wondering why it was that only the physical therapist came to help me, and he was paid to do that. Why those other guys didn’t want to leave their weights or their basketball or whatever just to help a person who obviously needed help.
Sometimes the world is like that. You find yourself hurting or afflicted or needy and you wonder why isn’t someone helping me. I read the story recently of a family in New England who had a horrible fire in their home. They lived on a little farm and they had a little house on their land. The fire burned the house to the ground. When the fire was done, they didn’t have much left over. They had taken some furniture out of the house. They had four cows. They were sitting outside the smoldering ashes of what once was their home and the next door neighbor came by and he began to kind of work his way through the smoldering ashes. He seemed fascinated by what the fire had done. He then walked up to the family that had suffered this tragedy and he said “Hey, what can I say to you?” He said ‘This is just horrible.” He said “I tell you, I don’t know what to do , but if you need anything, if you can think of anything you need to give me a call,” and he went and got in his car and drove off, leaving his words behind. Another neighbor came by a little while later and they didn’t need to ask whether or not this family needed anything. They could see this family needed a lot. They said “We’re going to be back in just a little while. Hold on.” And they went and got some friends and they came back and they built a temporary shelter for the family. They brought hay for the cows, and they brought food., some vegetables and potatoes and pots for cooking, and they brought clothing for the family. They brought everything the family needed and that’s all we’re saying this morning—that the Gift of Helps is like that. It is active. It more than words. It reaches out. Anyone can say nice things. A person with the Gift of Helps and indeed all Christians, are called to action. That’s why James says, “If a brother or sister is ill-clad and lacks daily food and one of you says to him, go in peace, be filled without giving him things ” needed for the body, what does it profit? John says “If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother or sister in need and closes his heart against them, how does God’s love abide in them? Let not your Iove be in word or in speech but in deed and in truth.” The Bible says, “be doers of the Word and not hearers only.” This gift is active.
Thirdly and finally, this gift, the Gift of Helps is able tn heal. And the incredible, the miraculous thing about this gift is it’s not only able to heal the person that’s being minitered to but it’s able to bring joy and wholeness and fulfillment and happiness and meaning and purpose to the person who’s doing the ministering—to the person who has this gift.
In the year 1913, a woman named Marian Preminger was born. She was born in the country of Hungary. She was born to an aristocratic family. She was reared in a castle. She had so much wealth, every need in her life was more than taken care of. She was surrounded as she drew up with butlers and chauffeurs and governesses and maids and tutors. Whenever they traveled, the family took its own linen. She had been told from the time she was a little girl that they were not to sleep in sheets that had ever been used by common people. As she grew up, she was sent to private schools and then she was sent to Vienna, Austria to a private school there. The years passed, and when she was 18 years-old, Marian Preminger fell in love with a Viennese doctor and they eloped. They went to live in a little town not too far away. A year later, the doctor left Marian. He departed, leaving her alone. He divorced her and she returned to Vienna with her hopes shattered. All of her money couldn’t fill the emptiness, the void that was in her life. There in Vienna, she began to study to try to be an actress, and as the years passed, Marian met Otto Preminger, the famous German director and they fell in love. They were married and they moved to the United States of America where they lived in Hollywood for a time and there in the midst of the lights and the glitter and the glamour, Marian Preminger entered the fast lane of life. She began to live a life of promiscuity and she just floated into one affair and then another affair, a sexually promiscuous lifestyle, and when Otto Preminger found out about it, he divorced her. Marian returned to Europe to live in Paris. With all of her wealth, she became a socialite, but she was empty. Her life was hollow and she felt like there was no hope for her and she became depressed and she contemplated suicide. Her life was simply devoid of meaning. This was in the year 1948 when Marian was 35 years old, and it was in that year there in the city of Paris, that Marian heard that a medical missionary named Albert Schweitzer was coming to a little town near Paris. She had heard of Albert Schweitzer when she was very young and she was fascinated by his work and she wanted to go and hear him. To this day, the Christian community does not know what to make of Albert Schweitzer. He was a professing. Christian but his views and his theology were not orthodox. His Christology, his view of Christ, was not really Biblical.
In the year 1906 he had written a book railed “Quest for the Historical Jesus” published in 1910 and it’s not recommended reading, but in the course of Albert Schweitzer’s life, he had many different theological perspectives on Christ and on the scriptures and sometimes he was more Biblical than other times. Throughout his life he had ore conviction ard his conviction was this: he believed that it was not possible to know God unless you were willing to fellow Jesus Christ, and he believed you could not possibly follow Jesus Christ unless you would be willing to give your life away, give it up for the service of other people. Albert Schweitzer went to Africa, to French Equatorial Africa. There in the town of Lambarene, he built a hospital and a leper colony. When he met Marian Preminger in the year 1948, he invited her to come and to serve in that hospital and in that leper colony. She was so desperate, and her life so absent of meaning, so hopeless, she was willing to try anything and so she said, “yes, I’ll go.” There in Lambarene at the hospital and in the leper colony, Marian Preminger accepted Jesus Christ, asked Him to come into her life and be her Lord and Savior.
As the years passed, she who had been served every year of her life with every need in her life, to the point where she was spoiled, actually became a servant. She began to bandage the wounded and to diaper babies and to feed lepers. And as the years passed, Marian Preminger found her life began to be flooded with joy and meaning and happiness and purpose and fulfillment by the power of God’s spirit. In the later years of her life, she wrote a book called “All I Ever Wanted Was Everything.” In that book she explained that she found she couldn’t have anything until she was willing to give everything up, first to the Lord, and then to the people of this world. And her favorite passage of scripture were the words of Christ when he said, “He who would save his life shall lose it, but he who would lose his life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel shall surely find it.” She died in the year 1979 and the NEW YORK TIMES carried her obituary, and there they quoted her as saying, “There are two types of people in the world. There are helpers and there are non-helpers. I have chosen to be a helper.” By helping others and by giving herself first to Christ and then to the needs of others, she found her life filled with yoy. She found healing and wholeness, and you see, that’s what the Bible promises.
You may not have the Gift of Helping, but if you have the Gift of Helping, you find, that as you give yourself to the needs of other people, you find fulfillment and joy. All of the gifts of the Holy Spirit are like that. As you practice the gift which is yours, you find fulfillment and joy and happiness and meaning But even if you don’t have this gift, the promise of God is this. If you would help other people, if you would participate in a ministry of helps, God would bless you and He would bring fulfillment and satisfaction into your life. You see, that’s why Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” That’s why Jesus said, “It’s more blessed to serve than to be served. ” One day we’re all going to stand before the judgement seat of Christ. On that day, the Lord Jesus Christ is going to take account of our lives. He’s going to see all the events and actions of our lives, and part of what He’s going to be looking for in our lives in the life, that we lived was a compassionate heart and a concern for the needs of other people
You know there’s a passage in the book of Matthew. It’s the passage I’ve quoted before. It’s the passage that, to me, it’s a beautiful passage of promise, but it’s also kind of a scary passage. It’s where our Lord Jesus Christ described His second coming. Jesus said, “when the Son of Man comes from Heaven in power and great glory and all of his angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne and before him shall be gathered all the nations, and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will say to those on his right hand, ‘come oh blessed on my Father, inhereit the kingdom prepared for you from before the foundation of the world, for I was hungry and you gaveme to eat, I was thirsty and you game me to drink, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and in prison and you visited me.’ They will say to him, “when Lord? When were you hungry or thirsty or naked or sick and in prison and we did these things for you?’ Jesus will say, ‘insofar as you have done these things unto the least of these brethren, you’ve done them unto me.’ But to those on his left hand, he will say ‘depart from me, you workers of inequity, into the lake of fire prepared for the devil and his angels, for I was hungry and you fed me not. I was thirsty and you gave me not to drink. I was naked and you clothed me not. I was sick and in prison and you did not visit me’ and they will say ‘when, Lord? When were you hungry or thirsty or sick or naked or in prison and we did not do these things for you and he shall say, ‘insofar as have not done them until the least of these, my brethren, you have not done them unto me.’” It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it, that God wants us to be a helping people.
If you’re a Christian, if you believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, you have eternal life, a neverending future with the saints in a new heaven and a new earth, but if you’re truly a Christian and you truly believe in Jesus Christ, the Bible says it’s meant to be expressed in some measure of helping ministry. That’s why Jesus said, “By this all men shall know that you are my disciples – if you love one another” Let’s pray.