Just Like Sodom and Gomorrah

"Just like Sodom and Gomorrah." Do you know who Ezekiel was talking about when he made that comparison? God's people. How would you like that as God's description of your character? Or what if we put that phrase up in neon lights on the top of your church?
In Ezekiel 16:48-50 God gives us a description of Sodom: "She had arrogance, abundant food, and careless ease, but she did not help--grasp the hand--of the poor and needy. Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before me." But you say I'm not arrogant and neither is my church. Okay, then how much of your church's abundance goes to help the needy? "I don't live a life of careless ease" you say. Okay, then how much of what you have is because it makes your life easier, more comfortable, less of a hassle? Do you know of anyone who has a real need that you wish you could help, but you just don't have the extra funds--just extra stuff you're not willing to do without? For example, do you know of any single mom's working long hours just to scrape by while their pre-school children spend the day with a babysitter or in a day care center? And you strongly believe that a mother's greatest work is to stay home with her children and lovingly train them up in the way of the Lord?
The early church was a need driven ministry. No one among the body of believers was to have a need unmet. Some of them freely sold some of their stuff to make sure that didn't happen. The first church council decided that the church had two goals: to preach the gospel to everyone and to meet the needs of the poor. The early churches took offerings for other churches who had people in need. James said--in the first letter of instruction written to the early church--that unless you were deeply concerned, concerned enough that your actions proved it, for the poor, your religion was useless. In fact, he said, "that to know what to do and to not do it was sin." John--in one of the last letters written to the church--told them that to claim to be willing to die for another brother in Christ just as Christ died for you, but to see a brother in need, have the resources to meet that need, and refuse to meet that need was to walk in darkness, to live a life that was a lie. Paul told the church at Ephesus that all men should work so that they can help others in the church who were working but were not making enough to meet their needs. The purpose of working was not to make enough to satisfy all their wants. One of the great distinctives of the early church was how greatly they loved each other. The world-changing early church was deeply concerned with the spiritual needs of the lost, the pagan world around them. They were also deeply concerned with the physical needs of those in the church and those in their communities. They didn't try to meet spiritual needs with physical things. But they didn't try to meet physical needs with spiritual things either. They met both needs.
Careless ease or Christ-like love? Which characterizes me, you, our churches? What would the world think of a church that poured out its love in visible things so that no one in the congregation went without his or her needs being met? What would the world think of a church that poured out its love to the poor and the needy in their community in tangible ways, without arrogance? What if Christians just used some of the millions--dare I say billions--of resources they've "donated" to themselves and their ease and instead used those resources and met the needs of those with needs in their congregation, those with needs in poorer congregations, and finally those with needs in the communities in which they live and in communities around the world? How different would America and the world be today if people knew--if people couldn't deny--that when we say God loved them enough to die for them that such love was real because they could see the effects of such love on kitchen tables, in job training, in repairs being done on homes in our neighborhoods, in offerings being taken by some churches to help poorer churches, in the attention we give to the needs of the world's countless orphans and widows, in preachers and other workers in the church not living on the edge of poverty? And the list goes on. Jesus prayed hours before His death that we would love one another as fully and completely as the Father loved Him. He prayed for that because He said that that was the way the world would be convinced that He was who He said He was--the loving, willing, Savior of the world. And we are commanded to love not in word but in deed--in visible, undeniable, actions.
And do you know what the frightening thing is? Did you catch the progression in Ezekiel's description of Sodom as he compared them to God's people in his day? First, there was the generation of arrogance, of selfish-abundance, of careless ease. Then came the generation of spiritual haughtiness and abominations. The compassionless produced a generation of compassionless children who haughtily immersed themselves in immoral living. Look at the decline in morality in America in the last few decades and tell me that the church has been using its resources wisely, used them to be the salt and light God has called us to be, used them to make His love and the truth of His love undeniable. Look at the morality in our churches and tell me what we have taught our children through our lives and values.
Judgement begins at the house of God because we bear the responsibility. It's time to get back to our first love--the first love of the early church: a growing relationship with Jesus, meeting the spiritual needs of others, and meeting the physical needs of others, starting with our brothers and sisters in Christ and stopping when we can no long find someone in the world with a need--our neighbors whom we are commanded to love as He loved us.
Either that, or put up the neon sign on your church lawn: "Just like Sodom and Gomorrah."