June 22, 2025: The Top 5 Things Jesus Never Said: “God Helps Those Who Help Themselves” Isaiah 1:11-17 & James 1:17-27 Rev. Dr. Rhonda Abbott Blevins Isaiah 1: 11-17
What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD;
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats.
When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand?
Trample my courts no more!
Bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and Sabbath and calling of convocation—
I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.
Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.
When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove your evil deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil;
learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow.
James 1:17-27
Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the
Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his
own purpose he gave birth to us by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first
fruits of his creatures. You must understand this, my beloved brothers and sisters: let everyone
be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for human anger does not produce God’s
righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and
welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. But be
doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of
the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look
at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look
into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers
who act—they will be blessed in their doing. If any think they are religious and do not bridle
their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and
undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to
keep oneself unstained by the world.
______
A storm descends on a small town, and the downpour soon turns into a flood. As the waters
rise, the local preacher kneels in prayer on the church porch, surrounded by water. By and by,
one of the townsfolk comes up the street in a canoe.
“Better get in, Preacher. The waters are rising fast.”
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“No,” says the preacher. “I have faith in the Lord. He will save me.”
Still the waters rise. Now the preacher is up on the balcony, wringing his hands in
supplication, when another guy zips up in a motorboat.
“Come on, Preacher. We need to get you out of here. The levee’s gonna break any minute.”
Once again, the preacher is unmoved. “I shall remain. The Lord will see me through.”
After a while the levee breaks, and the flood rushes over the church until only the steeple
remains above water. The preacher is up there, clinging to the cross, when a helicopter
descends out of the clouds, and a state trooper calls down to him through a megaphone.
“Grab the ladder, Preacher. This is your last chance.”
Once again, the preacher insists the Lord will deliver him.
And, predictably, he drowns.
A pious man, the preacher goes to heaven. After a while he gets an interview with God, and he
asks the Almighty, “Lord, I had unwavering faith in you. Why didn’t you deliver me from that
flood?”
God shakes his head. “What did you want from me? I sent you two boats and a helicopter.”
This familiar modern parable speaks to the ridiculousness of not recognizing or receiving
God’s help when it comes in the form of God’s human agents. It also serves as a reminder to
us that we are the hands and feet of God in this world—the “undercover agents” if you will,
of God’s mercy, God’s grace, God’s help, even God’s salvation.
This truth, however, sometimes gets muddied by a maxim—a saying that 75% of
Americans believe to be in the Bible according to a survey by the Barna group in the year
2000. That saying? “God helps those who help themselves.”
“God helps those who help themselves” is an ancient proverb that shows up in the literature of
many cultures, including a 1736 edition of Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanac.” But
it does not appear in the Bible and suggests a spiritual self-reliance inconsistent with
Christianity, said David Kinnaman, vice president of the Barna Research Group. 1
I think Kinnaman is right. This popular saying seems to point to the Christian faith, but it
represents how we distort the scripture, how we cling to narratives that fit our worldview
without holding them before the light of God’s word.
This saying, “God Helps Those Who Help Themselves,” fundamentally misrepresents both
God’s character and our calling. That’s why it’s first on the list for my new sermon series,
“The Top 5 Things Jesus Never Said.”
The reason this non-biblical phrase has such staying power is that it tells us exactly what
we want to hear. It feeds our deep-seated belief that we are the masters of our own destiny,
1 Bill Broadway, “You May Swear on the Bible, But It’s Not in the Bible,” Los Angeles Times, September 11,
2000, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-sep-11-cl-18991-
story.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20fact%20that%20most%20adults,the%20man%20was%20a%20si
nner. (accessed June 21, 2025)
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the captains of our own ship. It whispers to us that our successes are entirely our own
doing, that we’ve pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps.
But here’s what Scripture actually says about our condition before God: “You see, at just the
right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). Notice
that word—powerless. Not “partially able” or “doing our best.” Powerless. Helpless. Unable
to save ourselves.
The truth is, we love this false maxim because it makes us feel good about ourselves. It
suggests that God’s blessing is a reward for our efforts, that God’s favor is something we
can earn through our hard work and moral behavior. It transforms grace from a gift into a
wage, from mercy into something we deserve.
But here’s where this false gospel becomes truly dangerous—it doesn’t just puff us up, it
shuts our hearts down. If we believe that God only helps those who help themselves, then it
follows that those who are struggling must not be helping themselves enough. They must
not be trying hard enough. They must not deserve our help.
This twisted theology becomes our get-out-of-jail-free card for compassion. On a personal
level, we look at the homeless person on the street corner and think, “Well, if they really
wanted help, they’d get a job.” We see the single mother struggling to make ends meet and
wonder why she doesn’t just work harder. We encounter the family facing medical
bankruptcy and assume they must have made poor financial choices.
But James 1:27 cuts through all of our excuses: “Religion that God our Father accepts as
pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep
oneself from being polluted by the world.” Notice that James doesn’t say “look after
orphans and widows who are trying to help themselves.” He doesn’t qualify it with “as long
as they deserve it.” Pure religion—the kind God actually accepts—is caring for those who
cannot care for themselves.
The preacher in our opening story was so focused on waiting for God’s direct intervention
that he missed God’s help when it came through human agents. But we often make the
opposite mistake—we’re so convinced that people should help themselves that we miss
opportunities to be God’s help to others. We become like the priest and the Levite in the
Good Samaritan story, walking by on the other side because we’ve convinced ourselves that
helping isn’t our responsibility.
The phrase “God helps those who help themselves” reveals something uncomfortable about
us: we want to be self-made, and we want others to be self-made too. It’s a theology that
makes us the hero of our own story and gives us permission to ignore the struggles of
others. But that’s not the God we meet in Scripture, and it’s certainly not the Jesus who
spent His ministry reaching out to those who couldn’t help themselves.
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We like to think we’re climbing our way to God, working our way up the ladder of
righteousness, earning our place in God’s favor. But Scripture paints a radically different
picture of our condition.
“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Not after we cleaned up our
act. Not once we proved we were serious about change. While we were still sinners—still
broken, still rebellious, still lost.
Think about the thief hanging on the cross next to Jesus. Here’s a man who had run out of
time and options. No opportunity for a lifetime of good works, no chance to turn his life
around, no possibility of helping himself. Yet Jesus looked at him and said, “Today you will
be with me in paradise.”
That thief represents all of us. We all come to God empty-handed, with nothing to offer but
our need. Grace means getting what we don’t deserve, not what we’ve earned through our
efforts.
God has a strange way of working. Paul learned this when he pleaded with God to remove
his “thorn in the flesh.” God’s response? “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is
made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
God doesn’t wait for us to get strong enough, smart enough, or good enough before moving
in our lives. God specializes in working through weakness, not strength. God chooses the
foolish things to confound the wise, the weak things to shame the strong.
Look at Jesus’ ministry. The people Jesus helped most were those who knew they couldn’t
help themselves: the woman caught in adultery who had no defense, the paralyzed man
who couldn’t even get to the healing pool, the tax collector who could only cry out, “God,
have mercy on me, a sinner.”
These weren’t people who had exhausted all their self-help options before turning to God.
They were people who recognized their desperate need and cried out for help. And that’s
exactly when God showed up.
The truth is, we’re all helpless before God. If there’s a difference between us and those we
judge for not “helping themselves,” it’s that we’ve learned to recognize and receive God’s
help when it comes. Now the question is: Will we extend that same help to others?
If we want to understand God’s heart, we need look no further than Isaiah 1:17: “Learn to
do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the
case of the widow.”
Notice the language here. God doesn’t say “teach the oppressed to help themselves.” God
says defend them. God doesn’t say “encourage the fatherless to be more independent.” God
says take up their cause. God doesn’t say “tell the widow to pull herself up by her
bootstraps.” God says plead her case.
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This is active, protective, advocacy language. God is calling us to stand between the
vulnerable and those who would harm or neglect them. God is calling us to use our voice,
our resources, our influence on behalf of those who have little voice, few resources, and no
influence.
Why these three groups specifically? Because they represent people who literally cannot
help themselves. Children without parents had no power in the ancient world—or ours.
Widows in biblical times had no legal standing, no inheritance rights, no way to support
themselves. The oppressed, by definition, are those being held down by forces beyond their
control.
God’s heart breaks for people in impossible situations. And He expects ours to break too.
Remember our preacher in the flood? God didn’t abandon him—God sent two boats and a
helicopter. The preacher’s mistake wasn’t having faith; it was failing to recognize that God
often works through human agents.
Here’s the flip side of that story: We are called to be the boats and helicopters. When Jesus
said, “Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me” (Matthew 25:35-40), He was
making us God’s undercover agents in this world.
We are God’s hands to feed the hungry, God’s arms to embrace the lonely, God’s voice to
speak for the voiceless. When someone is drowning—whether in poverty, addiction, grief,
or despair—we don’t get to sail by and say, “God helps those who help themselves.” We get
to be the help God is sending.
Here’s the truth we need to face: We are all that preacher in the flood. We were all
drowning in our sin, our brokenness, our inability to save ourselves. The only difference
between us and those we judge for not “helping themselves” is that we recognized God’s
rescue when it came.
Maybe for you, God’s help came through loving parents who gave you a stable foundation.
Maybe it came through teachers who believed in you, mentors who guided you, or friends
who supported you. Maybe it came through opportunities that opened doors, or second
chances that gave you a fresh start.
But it came. God’s help came to you through human agents, through circumstances, through
provision you didn’t earn and couldn’t control. You didn’t pull yourself up by your own
bootstraps—you were lifted up by the grace of God working through His people.
Here’s the truth that changes everything: God doesn’t just help those who help
themselves—God helps us all. And then God uses us to help others.
So here’s your mission, should you choose to accept it: go be God’s undercover agent this
week, an undercover agent of God’s amazing grace. This message will self-destruct in five
seconds.