Father, such a blessing to be together here. Just come under the hearing of your word. Enjoy the time that we have in fellowship. And Lord, we know that our fellowship has been interrupted by just what's happened, Lord, in the country and in the world and in the church. And Lord, we get anxious sometimes and we want to see things different. But Lord, we know that you, you are sovereign over all things. And you are doing work in our heart, in our homes, in our country, and in the life of our church and churches everywhere. God, I pray that we allow you to do that good work. I pray, Father, that we know that, Lord, you always bring beauty out of ashes. So, Lord, we wait. We wait expectantly to see the good fruit of what you're going to do. Lord, help us to keep our own individual walk close to you. Help us to share the good news of the gospel as we have opportunity. We know there's nothing more important than that. Help us, Lord, to continue to pray for one another, to build up one another, as the scripture says, in the most holy faith. And we thank you for this faith that was once delivered to the saints, the teaching that we have received from the Word of God, passed on from generation to generation. Help us, Lord, to to pass it on ourselves. It's a sacred deposit, as Paul told Timothy, the deposit of truth. And Lord, may we study the word of God like the Bereans did, to see what things are true for ourselves, to confirm that which we have heard and that which we have received from others. I thank you for every faithful Christian who's been an influence for the good in my life. And Lord, I pray that I would continue to be a good influence in the lives of others. And may that be the prayer of each and every one here this morning, Lord. Bless the preaching of your word. I pray now in Jesus name. Amen. This message is the sixth in the series on justice, social justice, and the justice of God. Talking this morning on the social gospel, and I could honestly preach six messages on the social gospel, but I'm not going to do that. Proverbs 14.12 is a verse that you are all very well familiar with. Has many applications. And it says this, there is a way which seemeth what? Right unto a man, but you know the rest of it, but the end what? Thereof are the ways of death. I would hope that every young person, especially in here, would commit that verse to memory and save themselves from a lot of sorrows. We need to be certain of the path that we are on. We need to be certain of the people that we are going to follow. Last week I spoke about defending the biblical gospel. The biblical gospel, we don't have to guess about, it's defined in the scriptures in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, the first four verses. It's the death, what? Burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ according to the scriptures. Christ redeemed men by dying in their place. Sinful men. He endured the wrath of God upon Himself for our sins. The curse of God fell on Him as man's substitute. He did not become sinful in any way, but our sins were placed upon Him. 2 Corinthians 5.21 says, He, speaking of God the Father, hath made Him, God the Son, to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. And you know that that righteousness is an alien righteousness imputed to us on the basis of our faith. And there are many aspects to the death of Christ and the person of Christ that Christians learn as they grow in their knowledge of Christ from Their initial salvation experience from being babes in Christ to becoming mature believers who can feed on solid food, on meat. If you are a vegetarian Christian, spiritually speaking, you will be spiritually undernourished and you won't thrive. You need the solid meat of God's Word. Paul told the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 3, Chapter 3, verse 1, A pastor teacher, I think, delights in seeing his people grow in the grace and the knowledge of Christ. And Paul, I believe, was really saddened by this. He had spent considerable time there in Corinth, but they still were not growing as they should have been growing. He says, for you are yet carnal, for whereas there is among you, and here's the proof of their carnality, their flesh, envying, strife, and divisions. He says, are you not carnal as you're doing these things and walking like men? So we know from the scripture, and I've done a good study here a while ago in Corinthians, they were not only doctrinally confused, they were proud, they were divisive, they were opinionated, and they were acting in a self-centered manner that was destroying the unity of the church. And brethren, that can happen over any issue. Division can come in your home, it can come in the life of a church, over any issue. And in the church, not just the gospel issue, or a theological issue. So we need to be careful to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. The issue I'm going to address today is the social gospel, and it's an issue that has caused division in the church. But worse than that, it has historically led to apostasy in the church. Apostasy is a departure from the truth. When I spoke on the social justice movement that's taking place in society and among Christians, I expressed my concern that just as with the social gospel movement, which originated a long time ago, The social justice movement is not grounded in the scripture. It's not a cry for biblical justice. Many of the leaders in the social justice movement deny God altogether. They hate the Bible. And then on the other hand, there are Christians who believe that the church is not preaching the gospel if it is not engaged in social justice. You may have heard the saying was coined a long time ago. John Stott was one of the men who popularized it. The whole gospel for the whole world. And that sounds, if you don't think through it carefully, that sounds good, right? The whole gospel for the whole world. He wasn't speaking about the Pentecostal full gospel, evidenced by speaking in tongues. What that phrase was capturing was the whole gospel, the social ramifications of the gospel, social justice, meeting people's needs. as well as the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the whole gospel. We talked about last week how people believe today, Christians, that we need a two-tiered gospel. We need the gospel as defined by scripture, and then we need the gospel of social justice. Well, that's what the whole gospel for the whole world was all about. But let me make it clear again that the Christian church historically has always advocated and demonstrated good works for people who are in need. It has built orphanages. Think of George Miller in Spurgeon. It has built hospitals. It has dug wells. It has fed the hungry. It has supported the needy, in addition to giving the gospel. Ephesians 2.10 says, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. What are the next couple of words? Unto what? Good works. which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." That's present tense. Continually walk in them. Doing good to all men, as the scripture says, especially those who are of the household of faith. But we must make it clear again that all of the good works that we can do are not part of the gospel. And they're not our priority. Our priority is the gospel. There were many men, as I said, Mueller and Spurgeon, who did a lot of good things for people. John Wesley, the original Methodist. He was a man, you know, who was concerned about personal holiness, but he really started what was called the social holiness movement. And by the social holiness movement, he was talking about Christians who love Christ, who will go out into society and be concerned about people who have great needs, in addition to the need of the gospel. So all of those people were very well aware of the hurting and suffering people in the world, and they endeavored to help them. to help them bodily, but more importantly, spiritually. I also mentioned that our priority as brothers and sisters in Christ, do good to all men, but especially those of the household of faith, are our brothers and sisters in Christ. And why is that? Well, it's because Christians, because of their faith in Christ, are often more oppressed than any other people group. Now, you don't hear that on the news, but it's true. It was true in the New Testament times, and it's been true throughout history. It is true today. Impoverished Christians today, living in China, who are receiving aid from the state, what we would call welfare, have been ordered to renounce their faith in Christ or have their welfare benefits completely revoked. And that's not only happening in China, it's happening in other countries as well. India comes to mind. In many provinces of India, if a Christian doesn't renounce their faith in Christ, they will lose the very meager amount of support that they do receive from the government. Well, who's going to take care of those Christians if the government forsakes them? If they have no family to help them? That's the church's responsibility. And it's a priority, I believe, among Christians. John, say it in 1 John 3, verse 16. You can look there if you want. Hereby perceive we the love of God. Here's the love of God. Because He, Christ, laid down His life for us, we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Whoever has this world's goods and sees his brother has needs and shuts up his bowels of compassion from him, That means closes his heart to him. How dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, do not let us love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. That's by opening up your heart. And then from the scripture we read this morning, in James chapter 2, if a brother or sister is naked, destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, depart in peace, be warmed and filled, I pray God will take care of your needs. Notwithstanding, you don't give them the things that are needful for their body. What does it profit? Even so, faith, if it has not worked, is dead, being alone. It means it's standing apart from the reality. of the good that we are to do as Christians. Yea, a man may say, you have faith and I have works. Show me thy faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. Now, good works do not contribute to a person's salvation. Good works, when you understand James correctly in the biblical teaching in Romans and other portions of scripture by Paul, good works flow out of a person whose heart has been transformed by Christ. Listen, it's not natural to be empathetic for people. You can to a certain degree, but to be generally empathetic and sympathetic to people who are hurting, people you don't even know, that's not a natural thing. For the Christian, I believe God amplifies that. And if you don't have a heart of tenderness toward hurting people, then you need to really examine your own heart. So we have to make a clear distinction between the gospel once delivered unto saints and the social gospel, which is devoid, really, of the true gospel. I don't have time to get into great detail. I'll just give you a couple of people whose names were prominent in the development of the social gospel. One was named Walter Roshan Bush. He was a Baptist pastor. You see the dates on your notes from 1861 to 1918. So you can put that in your time frame in your mind. He wrote a book called Christianity and the Social Crisis. And that book was said to have ushered in a new era in Christian thought and action. And in that book, he asserted that religion's chief purpose was to create the highest quality of life for all citizens. So the church's purpose then, because the church was a religious institution, organization, as he saw it, its highest chief purpose was to create the highest quality of life for all its citizens, and that is simply not true. That is the function of what? The government, to create a quality of life for believers. So he was off on that, but even more importantly, Roshan Bush was a theological liberal. Now, I'm not talking about politically. He was raised a biblical literalist. In other words, his parents taught him that the Word of God was true from beginning to end, and he believed it. But like so many, he departed from the faith. He departed from what his parents taught him and instilled in him. Theological liberalism that he embraced at that time denied the main doctrines of the Christian faith, the deity of Christ, the virgin birth of Christ. the substitutionary atonement of Christ. Liberal theologians don't believe those things. They denied the literal second coming of Christ, the inspiration of Scripture, the God-breathed Scriptures, the inerrancy of Scripture, that the Bible is without error altogether. They denied the supernatural miracles, of course. They denied the Bible that records them. So they literally attacked the Bible. And they continue to attack the Bible today. That was Roshan Bush, called the father of the social gospel movement. Another man, and by the way, he was a poet and he was a hymn writer, and I'm pretty sure we've got his hymns in our hymn book. Washington Gladden. 1936 to 1918. He was a Congregationalist pastor. He believed that religion could be summed up in the word friendship. Friendship with the Father above and our brothers by our side. Now, I'm all for friendship, right? We're all for showing brotherly love. But in his book who wrote the Bible, he stated, it is idle to force the narrative of Genesis into an exact correspondence with geological science. I know some men today who say the very same thing. He said, Christ bore our sins in fellowship with us. Ah, here's the key, not in substitution for us. Denied the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. He tried, in his own words, to adjust Christianity to modern times. Does that sound familiar? The emergent church, the awoke church, it's doing the very same thing. Trying to adjust Christianity in modern times. He said we need a moral evolution, a getting away from original sin, to dealing with the sins of our times by which he meant social injustice. So he was a social activist. He believed in social Darwinism, the idea that society can become progressively better and better. and would eventually utter in a type of a utopia, although they may not have used those words. So there was Roshan Bush and there was Gladden. And then there was a man by the name of Charles Sheldon, 1857 to 1946. Sheldon was also a congregational minister. And in 1896, he wrote a novel And the title of that novel was called, In His Steps, What Would Jesus Do? And you thought, what would Jesus do? Those bracelets that people wear, WWJD, and you thought that that was a modern saying. Goes all the way back to Charles Sheldon. He coined that phrase, And then a lot of preachers began using it. What would Jesus do to teach that Jesus would advance the cause of social justice? He would be concerned about feeding and housing the poor. He would be an advocate for the marginalized people in society, and he would take up their cause and meet their needs. That's what Jesus would do. And all of this came about during a time in US history known as the Gilded Age. And if you fell asleep when you were in your history classes back in high school, I'll kind of give you a little briefing on the Gilded Age. It was the term that was used to describe the years between the end of the Civil War and the 20th century. Mark Twain wrote a book, a satirical novel, that he called The Gilded Age, A Tale of Today. And by the Gilded Age, Twain meant that the period was glittering on the surface, but there was great corruption underneath. And that sounds a lot like Jesus' rebuke of the Pharisees. He called them whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appeared beautiful, but within, It was full of dead people's bones and all manner of uncleanness. And that's how Mark Twain characterized the Gilded Age. It looked good. Lots of things were happening. America turned from an agrarian society to an industrial one. You had great technological inventions like the typewriter and the adding machine. and the industrialization of businesses and production, great production works were taking place. Cities were established. They started to boom with all of their problems lying underneath the surface just like they do today. Get this, the population of Chicago in 1840 was 5,000 people. By 1890, 50 years later, It was 1.1 million people. Now you can imagine the problems, the poverty that that ushered in. And during the Gilded Age, certain people became very rich at the expense of the working class that lived below the poverty level. And those rich people, if you remember your US history, were called what? Robber barons. Names like J.P. Morgan, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Henry Ford. Those were names that became prominent not long after. There was virtually no middle class. Parents accompanied their children. Get this, young children, young people. They accompanied their children to work in sweatshops 12 hours a day. You think homeschooling is hard? And during that time, Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnet. He wrote a book called The Gospel of Wealth. That's not health, wealth, and prosperity like the prosperity preachers today. But in that book he described his belief that it was the moral responsibility of the rich, especially the self-made rich, to tackle wealth inequality by giving their surplus wealth to those who were less fortunate. And that was the noble idea. Wealth distribution, socialism. Not all the wealthy people subscribed to it. I don't even know how much Carnegie kept for himself out of his surplus. But it was in perfect line with the social gospel movement of that era. By the way, The social gospel movement identified many social needs correctly. Children shouldn't have been working in sweatshops. People should have been paid an honest day's wage for an honest day's work. People were hurting. They needed help. It identified many of the social needs correctly, but it did not address them from a biblical perspective. That's true of the social justice movement as well today. It prioritized cultural restoration and minimized the power of the gospel itself. And eventually the gospel faded away. It failed to proclaim Christ as the agent of cultural transformation. And how does he do that? By transforming individual hearts. So that collectively those people can make a difference. The social gospel movement was driven by the belief that the second coming of Christ could not happen until humanity rid itself of the social evils of its time. And many of them, of course, didn't believe in a literal second coming of Christ, but the idea of a Christ-like society. Followers began to apply Christian ethics to social justice issues, especially as they related to economic policy. We're talking a long time ago. There is nothing new under the sun. I'll give you a quote that someone said, for men like Rauschenbusch and those he influenced, let's just call them the social gospelers, the church's mission was to bring in the kingdom of God by social action primarily and indeed almost exclusively. So to this way of thinking, Christians are doing gospel work when they argue for racial equality or promote just treatment of the poor, whether the gospel is preached or not. regardless if the gospel is preached. You heard of another saying, that is the social gospel saying, preach the gospel always, if necessary use words. Now there is a biblical truth that you could apply to that, but a lot of people have grabbed hold to that and taken it to mean you're preaching the gospel by doing social justice. Even if the gospel, the words are not being spoken, the true gospel of Jesus Christ. Well, I wasn't going to mention this, but I thought I should, because we talked about men of the past, and I could give you a long list of other men whose names, some of the names whom you would recognize. But one that you would certainly recognize is Dr. Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King was a social gospel minister. He lived from 1929, he was assassinated in 1968. I was a junior in high school. Martin Luther King Jr. said that Walter Rauschenbusch, the theological liberal and father of the social gospel movement, left an indelible imprint on my thinking. Another person who greatly influenced Martin Luther King was Mahatma Gandhi, the Hindu from India. Well, King followed in Rauschenbusch's theological liberalism. Now, let me just say something. I acknowledge the great work that Dr. Martin Luther King did for the civil rights of black people. I freely admit that he was a great American, but I cannot call him my brother in Christ unless he changed his views on many things before he died. He stripped the doctrine of the divine sonship of scripture out of the Bible, the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection of all literal meaning. He said we could argue with all degrees of logic that those doctrines, what we would call fundamental doctrines, are historically and philosophically untendable. He said the evidence for the virgin birth is too shallow to convince any objective thinker. King denied the deity of Jesus Christ. He denied the substitutionary atonement of Christ, the second coming of Christ according to Christian tradition and biblical teaching. And on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the bedrock of the Christian faith, According to 1 Corinthians chapter 15, Dr. Martin Luther King said this, Whatever you believe about the resurrection this morning, he was preaching, isn't important. Whatever you believe about it isn't important. The form that you believe in, that's the important thing, and that's theological liberalism. But I remind you in 1 Corinthians 15, A man named Paul said that what you believe about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is of first or primary importance. Because a Savior who did not conquer death in the flesh is no Savior at all, is he? Paul said in Romans 1, he's a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to what? The gospel of God, which he promised before through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning his son, our Lord Jesus, who was born of the seed of David, according to the flesh, and declared to be the son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. I would say that's of primary importance. Christ's resurrection, according to that scripture, confirmed His messianic identity, that He was the Savior. God the Father did that by His resurrection from the dead. The resurrection also authenticated the fact that Jesus was a true prophet of God. You remember in John 2, verse 13, when He's in this discourse with the Pharisees. And they were questioning his authority to do what he did. And he told them, destroy this what? Temple. This body. And in three days, I will raise it. And they thought he was thinking of the temple that took so long to build, the Herodian temple. He was speaking of the temple of his own body. Had he not risen from the dead, bodily, If it was just a spiritual resurrection or some other kind of a resurrection, Jesus would have been guilty of being a false prophet. And how many false prophecies does it take to make someone, according to the scripture in Deuteronomy chapter 18, a false prophet? Just one. If someone speaks in the name of God, if someone comes as Jesus did, claiming to be who he was, the son of God, and makes a prophecy of that kind. If it did not come to pass, then he was a false prophet and nobody should be following him. Martin Luther King also wrote this. He says, it is certainly justifiable to be as scientific as possible in proving the Pentateuch. That's the first five books of the Bible. That it was written by more than one author. It's the Wellhausen theory. that the whale did not swallow Jonah. Why are you teaching that to your kids? All right, that's basically what he's saying. You could take the symbolism out of that and make it a nice little story for your kids, but you don't have to believe it's literally true. Jesus was not born of a virgin. Jesus never met John the Baptist. You can believe all those things, or you can believe none of those things. But if you believe Him, He says, after all of this, what relevance do these scriptures have? What relevance does this Word of God really have? All those stories, all those doctrines. He asked this question, what moral implications do we find growing out of the Bible and all that collection of ideas that you've accumulated? What relevance, he says, does Jesus have in 1948? Let me translate it. The Jesus that Dr. King believed in was another Jesus. He wanted the social ethical teachings of Jesus, relevance, in 1948. He wanted relevance, the Sermon on the Mount, things like that. He wanted the ethic of Jesus without the cross of Jesus. He wanted an earthly kingdom without a heavenly king. He argued for social justice or social regeneration, the regeneration and transformation of society, but not biblical regeneration, a new heart and a new man. And may I add, without which there is no true freedom. Because when Jesus sets a man free, Jesus by his own word says, he is free indeed. Not free from his poverty, because there are a lot of poor saints, but free from the burden of his sin. The present time was King's concern. And in 1948, he began to strengthen his commitment to the social gospel. In the book, The Kingdom of God in America, by Richard Niebuhr, not exactly a fundamentalist, He criticized the liberal social gospel, and here is how he described its message. A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross. I'll say it again. A God without wrath My last message on this series will be on the divine justice. A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministration of Christ without a cross. That was his description of the main thrust of the social gospel movement. So King wrote, let us continue to hope work and pray that in the future we will see a warless world. We will when Christ comes, right? A better distribution of wealth. and a brotherhood that transcends race or color. And we don't have any problems with the idea of brotherhood, of being good Samaritans, of treating all people equal because they've been made in the image of God. But you know what he said after he mentioned those words? He says, this is the gospel that I will preach to the world. Friends, that is not the biblical gospel. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 11, one, I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me. For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I bethrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ." Talking to the Corinthians. But I'm afraid that as a serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims to you another Jesus, than the one that we have proclaimed. Or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. And there are many people today not only putting up with it, they're embracing it. Another Jesus. The social ethics of Jesus without the cross. Another gospel. works without the cross, without the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I say this sadly to you this morning that Dr. Martin Luther King, great American that he was, believed in another Jesus, a Jesus of a different kind, a gospel of a different kind. And that is equally true with black liberation theology, which is taught in many churches in this country, particularly in the South, the churches that the Democrat politicians like to visit when election comes around. They want to go and cater to them for their vote. And many of them are sincere people, and they sing wonderfully, and they're very expressive. And some, no doubt, are truly born again, but many are not. And the ministers who fill the pulpits, like Barack Obama's pastor for 23 years, Jeremiah Wright, was not a saved man. Did not believe in the Christ we believe in, did not believe in the gospel that we believe in. One of the black theologians, liberation theologians, wrote a book in 1997, that's not that long ago, Black Theology and Black Power. You wonder where the black power movement came from? All of that came out of the social justice movement. Here's what he said in 1969, I still regard Jesus Christ today as the chief focus of my perspective on God, but not to the exclusion of other religious perspectives. In other words, it's not no man goes to the Father, but by me. Like Jesus said, he says, God's reality is not bound by one manifestation of divine in Jesus, but can be found whenever people are being empowered to fight for freedom. So if you want to see Jesus, you see it in people who are empowered to fight for freedom. And when you read your Bible, you have to read your Bible, not from the top down, not from a divine revelation, exposing man's wicked heart, and the need that can only be satisfied in Christ. You have to read your Bible, he said, from the bottom up. From the lives of the oppressed people. And then you will see the clarion example of Jesus Christ on the cross. He was a man being crucified. He was a man being oppressed. Didn't see him as the God-man. The father taking his wrath out upon his son. That's black liberation theology. Much of it. So he says that the divine in Jesus could be found wherever people are being empowered to fight for freedom. You could see the divine in Jesus in Mahatma Gandhi because he was fighting for freedom of the Hindus. Life-giving power for the poor and the oppressed is the primary criterion that we must use to judge the adequacy of our theology. What? Life-giving power for the poor and the oppressed is the primary, primary criterion that we must use to judge the adequacy of our theology, not abstract concepts like the person in the work of Jesus Christ. like the virgin birth, the substitutionary atonement, the inspiration of scriptures, the work of Christ in redeeming sinful men. We can't use that as our theology. We have to use social empowerment, social justice, the social gospel devoid of Christ. Now, I wanna say, I thank God there are many black churches and preachers who still preach the true gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. While there are many white preachers who don't, they preach all kind of additions to the gospel, make it part of the gospel, health, wealth, prosperity. Let me also say, lest I be guilty of oversimplification, the social gospel movement was very diverse, very complex. There were men and women who embraced it, who did not think alike on everything, especially theologically. They all didn't get on board with the denial of the fundamentals. Within the broad label of the social gospel movement, there were those who held to scripture, those who preached true conversion, and the same is true in the social gospel movement today. I think they just need to get their priorities back right. Many good preachers during that whole era tried to strike the balance, the right balance, in the social gospel movement. They're trying to do that today, but it's very difficult. I'll close with a story, a little word from a Baptist preacher named Dr. A.C. Dixon. He learned that trying to strike the balance between The gospel and what flows out of the gospel, the good works that we are to do, is difficult. He said he learned that in his three years at Ruggles Street Baptist Church in Boston. He went there because the church had a large endowment, a large fund for social services. And he hoped that by ministering to men's temporal needs, the more readily to win them to Christ. He hoped by ministering to men's temporal needs, he'd be able to win them to Christ more readily. But he says, I found that it did not work that way. And he says, I left that church and that idea. And he would say afterwards, I have learned that it is immensely easier to reach a man's body through his soul than to reach his soul through his body. It takes more power to do it, to convert the man, more tears, more prayer, and more of the Holy Spirit. But in the best, in the long run, it's the best. So sometimes we could easily get off track. And I'm not saying that you can, you don't always have a time to preach the gospel to somebody. It may not be the right time. Some people do need help. But what I find is a lot of Christians are willing to help with the bodily needs and then leave it there. Or they spend a pre-ordinate amount of time doing that aspect, social work, And they have very little time left for the actual life giving gospel. So he says it's basically as much as possible, get to the need, the real need first. Don't be afraid to tell them the gospel. That's what they need. Because if they die without Christ, even if you give them a nice bed to die in and some food before they die, what have you really done? What have you done for their soul? Nothing. Mother Teresa fed all kind of the poor and the homeless in India. And she was revered in the Catholic Church as a saint. She never preached the gospel to them. All she did was give them a warm bed before they died and faced a Christless eternity. Lord, help us to do what's right. Help us to keep the gospel our main focus. Not any other issue. Nothing. It'll take you off track. Use whatever forms you have to tell people about Christ. Keep Him prominent in your life. That's what Paul told the Philippians. That he must have the preeminence. lest we be guilty of failing to keep the main thing, the main thing. Father, thank you this morning. Help us, Lord, with all our heart to love you more fervently and to be good Samaritans, to love others as we, as Paul said, are already loving ourselves. to do good unto all men, especially those of the household of faith, to make the most of every opportunity, to prioritize our time, to be students of the word of God, to have an answer to everyone who asks you the reason to the hope that is within us with meekness and fear, that we would be like Paul, vigilant, sober-minded, Always ready to preach and to defend the gospel of Jesus Christ. Lord, help us. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.