SUMMER BREAK: God Helps Those Who Do His Will
Joe Florestano
Transcribed by DaVinci Resolve (with edits)
“God Helps Those Who Help Themselves”
If you can read the really small print on there, it says, “Breaking from Bad Theology.” This is a series that Steven started a couple weeks ago, kind of introduced it, and we’re gonna be talking in the next several weeks about some bad theology that has kind of crept into the church and crept into the culture, how we can address it, and how we should alternatively think about it.
What I’m gonna talk about this morning—what Steven asked me to talk about this morning—is this idea that exists in our culture, and it’s a phrase—and you may have heard this saying before—it’s the saying that “God helps those who help themselves.” It’s kind of an old-fashioned saying, I feel like I heard it more as a kid than I do nowadays. People would repeat that. But it still exists in our culture. So even if you don’t hear it directly said all that much, you know, if you’re new to the faith, or new-ish (copyright Nick Anderson), you may not have heard it at all, but you have very likely been impacted by that way of thinking in our culture.
So the way we’re gonna kind of attack this notion of “God helps those who help themselves,” first of all, we’re gonna line it up with scripture, we’re gonna see how it stacks up against the word of God (spoiler alert: it doesn’t stack up very well). After that, we’ll kind of talk about the origin of this saying, kind of how it made its way into our culture—and I’ll give you a warning right now, it’s gonna sound a little bit like a history lesson. Sorry, but when I came up here, you knew you weren’t getting out of here without a history lesson, so I’m also kind of not sorry, because it is interesting, and I’ll do my best to not get too bogged down in the details, but the history is the context, and the context helps us make sense of the present. After that we’ll talk about some practical implications and alternatives to this idea that God helps those who help themselves. And I wish I could have you like open up to like one specific Bible verse where we’ll be; we’re gonna be all over the place, so I’ll do my best to, for one, slow down. I’ve been told that I talk fast. I’ll try to slow down and mention the scriptures that I’ll be referencing so that if you wish, you can write them down and look at them later for yourself.
But we’re gonna analyze this statement, “God helps those who help themselves.”
Whom Does God Help?
First of all, it’s not a Bible verse, so I can’t point you to where that is in scripture because it doesn’t exist in scripture. But scripture does talk about people who God helps, so it would be worth it to go into the Bible and look at instances in which God is helping people, and I will offer a few of them to you right now.
The first one is Psalm 10:14. It says:
But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted;
you consider their grief and take it in hand.
The victims commit themselves to you;
you are the helper of the fatherless.
Psalm 72:12 says:
For he will deliver the needy who cry out,
the afflicted who have no one to help.
Later on, Psalm 94 verses 16 through 19:
Who will rise up for me against the wicked?
Who will take a stand for me against evildoers?
Unless the Lord has given me help,
I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death.
When I said, “My foot is slipping,”
your unfailing love, Lord, supported me.
When anxiety was great within me,
your consolation brought me joy.
You who fear him, trust in the Lord—
he is their help and shield.
And then finally, Isaiah 25:4 says:
You have been a refuge for the poor,
a refuge for the needy in their distress,
a shelter from the storm
and a shade from the heat.
For the breath of the ruthless
is like a storm driving against a wall.
So think about the people that are described in these verses. Think about those adjectives that are used. Afflicted, the victims, the fatherless, the needy, the persecuted, the anxious, the poor, those who fear God. Not exactly the kind of self-sufficient, capable person invoked by the saying, “God helps those who help themselves.” Right? It’s the exact opposite. It’s the vulnerable. It’s the desperate who in scripture find themselves on the receiving end of God’s help.
So that’s one strike against that saying.
Helping Oneself
On the flip side, what does it mean for a person to help himself or help oneself? You don’t see that phrase used explicitly in scripture all that much, but the closest you get is when a person follows their own desires. Okay, that’s kind of helping yourself. And another spoiler, scripture does not paint that too positively. Let me offer a few passages where it describes people who are helping themselves or pursuing their own desires.
Galatians chapter 5, starting at verse 17.
For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit. … The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
James 1:14 says:
But each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desires and enticed.
1 John 2:16 says:
For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.
And then Jude chapter 1 verses 14 through 16 says:
“See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” These people are grumblers and faultfinders; they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage.
So in scripture, what we see is: pursuing one’s own desires, when they originate with oneself and not from God, is inseparably linked with sin and ungodliness. I think the conclusion here is obvious. “God helps those who help themselves,” it’s just factually wrong. It just does not line up with scripture any way you slice it.
On the one hand, the people that God helps are precisely those who cannot help themselves. And on the flip side, those who are helping themselves are the ones that find themselves at variance with God’s Will. So whatever direction you look at this saying, it does not stack up to scripture.
There we go, sermon over. It took me like six minutes. Love it.
Presuppositions
But there is something bigger at play here, other than the fact that it’s just factually wrong. There’s more going on here. The bigger issue at play is its impact on the culture. And for that, we need to consider the source of the saying. And it can be important to consider the source of something because where something comes from—it comes from certain presuppositions.
For example, if you wanted to read something by nineteenth century philosopher Frederick Nietzsche, you’d probably be reading a load of garbage, okay? Nietzsche was the one who famously said that “God is dead,” the rebuttal to which you can find in the musical catalog of the Newsboys. That’s not to say that everything Nietzsche said was wrong or evil or out of touch, but if you’re evaluating a truth claim and you are aware that its source is in nineteenth century philosopher Frederick Nietzsche, you would approach it with skepticism, and there’d be—warning bells would go off, and you’d say, “Hmm, I better see if someone else also agrees with what he said because otherwise I’m not gonna accept it.”
Another example: if you read something by Karl Marx, another one of our ninetheenth century German friends, you would probably be reading a load of socialist nonsense. You know, Karl Marx is the one that, you know, first year liberal arts students think is the greatest thing since sliced bread, which ironically would be in very short supply if you actually put his theories into practice. Not everything that Marx said was wrong or evil or out of touch or completely off the rails, but if you read something, a claim, and you know where its source is from, and if it’s someone like Karl Marx or Frederick Nietzsche, you would say, “Hmm, I’m gonna approach that with skepticism, because maybe there’s some underlying things at play here that factor into why he said that.”
And it’s not always negative stuff too, right? Anytime anyone says anything, they have underlying presuppositions. When we listen to Steven preach here every Sunday, he has presuppositions that he comes with, you know? And they’re evangelical presuppositions, right? It’s that the scriptures are the Word of God, inerrant, and that the only way to salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ, through the grace of God. All of these underlie the things that Steven says here to us. And so we can approach that, not with skepticism, but with, “Yes, this is very likely something that is true and from God.”
So it’s important to consider the source. Where did this saying, “God helps those who help themselves,” come from? Not from any nineteenth century German philosophers. I’ll say that right now. They’re easy to pick on.
Coined by Algernon Sydney
This thing was actually first said by a guy named Algernon Sydney. I’m into the part of the history lesson. So sorry if you’re not into this, but whatever. Algernon Sydney was a 17th century English author, political theorist. This phrase is found in his work called “Discourses Concerning Government.” Riveting title. I’m sure it flew off the shelves.
He was one of these enlightenment thinkers in England. And the enlightenment was a very interesting period in the history of the world, particularly in England. Until this point, around Algernon Sydney’s time, the monarch of England kind of ruled with this power that was kind of authoritarian. Different than it is now. There was something back then that was called the “divine right of kings,” and a lot of these European nations that were ruled by monarchs, they looked at their kings as someone who was appointed by God and in that position by God’s Will and God’s pleasure. And so that person would be carrying out God’s judgment in a very direct sort of way. So to criticize the king was to criticize the instrument of God. And Algernon Sydney was one of these people who kind of rejected this notion of the divine right of kings. He argued for a representative government, this idea of a social contract between the government and the governed. And a lot of his ideas led to what’s called the Glorious Revolution in England. I’m not gonna bore you with the details, but it kind of amounted to a change in power—one king being kind of deposed, another set up in his place—and in that shift of power, the Parliament became a bigger role in England’s government. Until then, the parliament kind of just did whatever the king said and really didn’t have any real power. But after that point, they did. And a lot of that was due to the writings and works of people like Algernon Sydney.
Popularized by Benjamin Franklin
And so Algernon Sydney—him and another person you may be more familiar with, John Locke, are considered to be the two biggest political influences on the American founding fathers. Okay, so Benjamin Franklin was reading Algernon Sydney, and so were people like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, Alexander Hamilton. These people were reading Algernon Sydney and influenced by his works. And so this phrase, “God helps those who help themselves,” first written by Sydney, gets picked up by none other than Benjamin Franklin, published in his very popular Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1758. I want to actually read the entire paragraph where this comes from, because a lot of it’s very good. Of course, Franklin here is talking about the heavy taxes laid on the colonies by England, and he says this:
“Friends, says he, and neighbors, the taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid on by the government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly, and from these taxes the commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an abatement. However let us hearken to good advice, and something may be done for us; God helps them that help themselves.”
A lot of good stuff in that quote, right? He’s saying, “You guys are worried about the taxes? We got bigger fish to fry here. You guys have bigger issues in your lives than these taxes imposed on us by a government thousands of miles away across the ocean. Let’s deal with some stuff in your own lives.” But then he elicits this phrase from Algernon Sydney, “God helps those that help themselves.” So now he’s kind of bringing a theological component into it—this mechanical idea where, “You want God to help you? Start by getting your rear in gear. All right? Let’s start by doing something.”
And it was a very popular phrase. It was picked up and repeated over and over again. It kind of became a part of the milieu of American culture to the extent—and this is crazy, you guys are gonna be surprised by this. In 2005, a survey was done saying that 81% of self-identifying born again Christians think that “God helps those that help themselves” is an actual Bible verse.
I don’t either, yeah.
So now we have this phrase that’s born in the Enlightenment, brought through one of our founding fathers, that’s now kind of considered to be an actual part of scripture. Which, I don’t know—if Benjamin Franklin were really onto something, maybe this wouldn’t be the most damaging thing, but Benjamin Franklin is not a great source for theological insight.
(I apologize ahead of time if any of you are really big Benjamin Franklin fans; you’re gonna be a little bit bummed by what I’m about to say.)
Franklin is described by historians as ascribing to a doctrineless, moralized Christianity. And if he was a champion of religious freedom, he was more so a champion of generic religion, not so much Christianity itself. And I’m gonna read something that he wrote towards the end of his life, about a month before he died, actually. He was corresponding with a theology professor from Yale who wanted to hear his thoughts on religion and on Christianity, and this is what he says. There’s gonna be some shocking things in here. This is Benjamin Franklin:
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see. But I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes. And I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity. Though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good consequence, as it probably has, of making his doctrines more respected and better observed. Especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme [talking about God] takes it amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world with any particular marks of his displeasure.
Steven wants to do a whole series on bad theology? You could take a whole sermon series just on that paragraph. Whoa. You have things in here like:
He believes that Christianity and the scriptures have been corrupted over time. That’s the first red flag.
“Doubts to his divinity.” And he says he doesn’t feel really the need to even think about the divinity of Christ all that much. But he says, “Oh, you know, but if people want to believe that, that’s great. If it makes them kind of act like good people.”
He says, “I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it amiss by distinguishing.” So his impression is that God doesn’t even really care whether you follow these basic doctrines of Christianity, so long as this system allows you to live like a good person, live with good morals.
He ascribes this idea of a “nice” Jesus, a Jesus that teaches us how to be nice. And here’s the thing, people that ascribe to this kind of “nice Jesus” theology are unsure what to do with the difficult teachings of Jesus. All right? What do you do—if your Jesus is simply someone who teaches you how to be a nice person, what do you do with when Jesus says, “Anyone who doesn’t hate their father and mother is not worthy to be my disciple,” or, “Anyone who would come after me must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me”? What do you do when Jesus is flipping tables in the temple courts? What do you do when Jesus calls the Pharisees a brood of vipers? That’s not very nice. What do you do when Jesus says to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan”? This is not nice stuff. And so what people do when they ascribe to this “nice Jesus” theology is they reject what they don’t like. And I think that’s what Franklin’s getting at when he’s saying that there’s been corruption in the scriptures over time, because it doesn’t match up with this notion of who Jesus is. You can just kind of discard the parts of scripture that you don’t like. And when people do that, when people discard the parts of scripture they don’t like, now what’s happened is you personally have become the arbiter of truth in your life. You’ve become the authority of what is true and what is right, and if you’re in that position, all of a sudden you are lord and not Jesus.
By the way, as long as we’re talking about founding fathers—Jefferson, even worse than Franklin in this regard. Sorry. I don’t mean to make you like bummed out at the upcoming 4th of July barbecue. You can still be grateful to be an American, but just—you gotta be realistic about the founding fathers.
A Shift in Ideology
So this idea that God helps those who help themselves, it was much more than a pithy statement for Franklin. It was symbolic of his whole understanding of religion. So let me kind of bring this all together. See if you can follow this progression with me. It’s like a stream. It’s a stream that starts in the Enlightenment in Europe. All of these European nations are shifting from “monarch, divine right of kings” to “us regular people have the ability to govern ourselves. We’re pretty great. We can kind of do it. We don’t need some king who is somehow infused with this authority from God. We can do this ourselves.”
And along with that, you have advancements in all kinds of places—in science and in literature. Some of the greatest thinkers in the world came out of this Enlightenment period in Europe. Some of my—even my personal hero, someone like Blaise Pascal, who’s a personal hero of mine, came out of this period of time.
But anyway, you have these thoughts starting to pop up. Why do we need the Bible to tell us truth when we have science now? Why do we need God to give us security and comfort when we have all these emerging technologies? Why do we need God to govern us when we can do this pretty darn well ourselves? This is happening in the Enlightenment in Europe centuries ago. And so now this stream kind of flows. And in America, the founding fathers were born into this Enlightenment stream, where it’s less of a dependence on God and more of a dependence on mankind—our ability to do good things for ourselves. America was born in this stream, as was Benjamin Franklin and a lot of these founding fathers. And now this current continues into modern day America where man has become so elevated and God has become so much brought down that now all of a sudden it’s like, it’s almost hate speech to even bring up God in the secular culture, right? That would have been crazy to the people all the way over here at the beginning of the stream, but now over here, God has become so devalued and man so elevated that to suggest that there’s any other paradigm is, you know, hate speech in some places.
When our concept of man is elevated, our concept of God is brought low. Even if it’s accidental. If we’re giving man a higher station than he should have, we are by extension bringing God low. It’s an inversion of what John the Baptist said in John 3:30:
“He must become greater, I must become less.”
This stream that starts in the Enlightenment and goes through modern day America is an inversion of that. “Man must become greater, God must become less.”
People struggle nowadays and they say things like—they struggle with why America is in the moral state that it’s in. They say things like, “Weren’t the founding fathers Christians? Wasn’t this nation founded on Christian principles?” Well, technically yes, but the founding fathers, a lot of them were Franklin-style Christians. And more accurately, America wasn’t born with Christian values but Enlightenment principles that pay lip service to a generic Christianity while denying its most fundamental truth that Jesus is Lord.
So “God helps those who help themselves” is one of the major currents in this river and its implications are far-reaching, because now they become a part of the fabric, the DNA of our nation.
Theological Implications
It affects the way people think about salvation. I don’t know that anyone would articulate it in this way, but I think a lot of people, when thinking about how does salvation happen, it’s the idea that the grace of God does not come into play until after a person has freely and independently chosen to follow God—independent of God’s grace, independent of his call. This is actually a heresy called semi-Pelagianism that was condemned by the second council of Orange in 529. Another date you don’t have to remember.
But this is completely contrary to scripture. John 6:44 says:
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them.”
Revelation 3:20 says:
“Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person and they with me.”
Romans 5:8 says:
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
And Ephesians 1:18:
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.
Salvation comes when God makes the first move. And we can debate the degree to which man is involved in that, but what is not up for debate is that God is the driving force in salvation. Salvation does not happen without the grace of God initiating the process.
And yet, this idea that “God helps those who help themselves,” this is how many Christians see salvation. “God just sat around and waited for me to make the wise decision to let him save me.” By that point, most of the work’s already done, and God just did the rest of what he needed to do to give me grace and set me up for heaven. That’s just not what scripture says in any way.
This is really ironic because this idea that “God helps those who help themselves” is so tied in and associated with Christianity. The ironic thing is that “God helps those who help themselves” is actually more closely related to Islamic doctrine than Christian. In the Quran, Surah 13, verse 11—I wonder if this is the first time the Quran’s ever been quoted here at Salem Covenant Church. The Quran, Surah 13 verse 11 says:
Verily, Allah does not change a person’s condition unless they change their inner selves.
Is this surprising to anyone? Islam is a religion of works. Salvation comes by following the Five Pillars of Islam—profession of faith, daily prayer… what else? … fasting during Ramadan, acts of charity, and pilgrimage to Mecca. If you do all these things and you’re kind of good to go, right, Allah is kind of bound to give you salvation at that point if you do all these good things, if you help yourself. I mean, honestly, if you’re gonna ascribe to the notion that God helps those who help themselves—at that point, you may as well be a Muslim. Christianity does not have a lot for you. Please direct all angry emails to Pastor Steven.
What scripture tells us is that salvation comes only by faith in Christ through the grace of God and in no other way. Salvation only comes through Jesus. That is what scripture says.
But this idea that God helps those that help themselves, even if you rightly give God the credit for your salvation, it’s also kind of easy to adopt this notion just in our daily Christian walk. Picture this situation. I want something to happen. I have a goal, an ambition, a dream, a desire, whether it’s at work or at home or in my relationship, something like that. I want something to happen, and I immediately act to make that thing happen. And then once I’m well underway, I ask God to bless my endeavor. I’m not gonna ask you to raise your hand if that’s you, but that is me a lot of the time, right? I act, and then I ask God to help me. When I do that, I’m adopting this idea that God helps those who help themselves.
Here’s the problem. If what you’re after is not in God’s Will, he will not bless it. And if my assumption is that God will help me after I help myself, and if he has not helped me yet, the only conclusion is that I just need to try harder. And the whole thing is just futile at that point.
Do God’s Will
Instead, we should seek primarily to be in tune with God’s Will, pursue that, and then ask for God’s blessing. “Oh, it’s that easy, Joe? Just be in tune with God’s Will?” Yeah, that’s… “How do you do that? How do I know what God’s will is?” Same way I know what Megan’s will is for our family—because I talk to her, and I spend time with her, and I do life with her, and I can anticipate what she’s thinking and what she’s feeling because I’ve spent all this time with her. So how do you know God’s Will? By talking to him and spending time with him and doing life with him. Being in constant prayer, right? What does it say in 1 Thessalonians? “Pray continually.” That means adopting an attitude of constantly being in communion with God. Being in constant prayer and being saturated in the Word.
“That’s your advice, Joe? Pray and read the Bible?” Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. It is. That’s the antidote to falling victim to the lie that God helps those who help themselves.
So if we want to remove this saying from our vocabulary as Christians, we might replace “God helps those who help themselves” to “God helps those who do his will.” It’s not snappy. You’re not gonna see it on a bumper sticker or a t-shirt, and Benjamin Franklin certainly wouldn’t say it, but it puts God first. It’s a posture of humility. It is relational rather than mechanical. And most of all, it’s biblical.
Dependence on the Holy Spirit
I’m—how am I doing for time? I’m doing okay. Great. I have one more thought here, and that is this posture of humility.
I see in the room there’s a few people, I think, who have recently, in the last few years, gone through Confirmation, and you know the Covenant Affirmations. One of those affirmations is, “We affirm a conscious,” what? “dependence on the Holy Spirit,” right? That is in complete variance with this idea that God helps those who help themselves. Affirming a conscious dependence on the Holy Spirit is this posture of, “I can’t do it.” I’m gonna wake up every morning and say, “God, I can’t do it, but I know that you can. And I’m gonna trust in you to help me.”
And so this is one of the very core things of what we believe as Covenanters—a conscious dependence on the Holy Spirit, not an attitude of, “I’m gonna act, and then I’ll talk to God about it.”
So we need to—these affirmations, I mean, this is what we should be living into as people who want to follow the word and follow Jesus the best that we can.
May we always try to seek to root out lies from the devil and relentlessly pursue the truth of God’s Word.
