On Wednesday evening, Reverend James MacIver preached on Proverbs 24: 11 – 12, a sermon which he called, ‘God’s Emergency Services’.

He noted that the vast majority of social reform has tended to originate with Christians, and to be enacted out of Christian love. This passage addresses God’s expectation that His people will not countenance injustice or oppression where they find them occurring, and that their efforts will extend to include the spiritual rescue of those who are lost, or heading for death without a saving knowledge of Christ.

In this sense, then, Mr MacIver likened the church to a rescue service which acts on God’s behalf, but with one crucial difference between it and the temporal rescue services to which we are used. Firemen, paramedics and other such people, for whom we are very grateful, act in response to a callout. Help must be asked for, an alarm raised, and then these emergency services will attend. It is not so with the spiritual rescue service – God requires His people to acquaint themselves with need and to respond to it that way, not waitingg for an appeal.

In this connection, verse 11 has two imperatives, the first of which is that the Lord’s people must rescue those who are perishing.

The image conveyed here is of people who are being led away – they are, in fact, having something done to them and it appears that they are oblivious to the danger into which they are being drawn. This is not to imply that they are somehow passive victims: they are led willingly, and are choosing blindness over revelation. There is, of course, another power involved in their downfall. Mr MacIver read 2 Corinthians 4: 3 – 4 to illustrate this, demonstrating that, where the gospel is obscured, it is Satan who prevents people from seeing its truth.

Those who live in unbelief congratulate themselves that they are free from delusion when, in fact, they are the most deluded of all.

It is incumbent, therefore, upon Christians not to stand idly by and allow the suffering which sin inflicts. They are to remember that they were once unbelievers too, captives of Satan, and that others spoke a word in season to try and rescue them. This is not just to be a purely spiritual witness, but is to extend to people’s temporal suffereing in its widest sense – social problems, poverty, debt, addiction etc. All of these are needs which God expects and equips His people to meet.

Verse 11 also urges Christians to restrain those who are stumbling towards a lost eternity. There is an implication here that the unsaved are in danger of falling, but also that their Christian neighbour should be ready to put out a steadying hand, to pull them back from the spiritual abyss. It is for the Lord's people to be a restraining influence in the world.

Christians know that they are called upon to be the salt of the earth. Although we tend to think of salt as primarily being for flavouring food, it is also effective as a preservative. Salt, when thoroughly applied, can prevent your meat from going bad; it has been used to preserve stores through a long winter.

If God’s people are to apply the preservative of their faith and witness to those in peril, they have to be involved with the community. There is no reluctance on the part of secularists to play their part and they are unashamed in trying to get their worldview to prevail, so that the Bible and Christianity are utterly excised from public life. The only way to redress this balance, and to keep God’s truth before people’s eyes, is to ensure that those who follow Him are in situations where they can indeed witness to the unsaved.

Proverbs has a lot to say about sloth. For example, in verse 30 of this same chapter, there is reference to the vineyard of a slothful man, where the wall lies in need of repair. The image conveyed is not neccessarily one of complete laziness – it can also be interpreted as omission, of neglecting to do one’s duty.

Verse 12 addresses the attempts we make to excuse ourselves from helping those in need. It preempts any notion of using ignorance as a defence: Christians are not to claim that they did not know of their neighbour’s need, but are to make every effort to acquaint themselves with that need so that they will not be in ignorance.

As in the parable of the Good Samaritan, the question we must ask ourselves is not, like the Pharisee, ‘who is my neighbour?’ but, as Jesus said, ‘who can I be a neighbour to?’

Just as the Father sent Jesus, He is sending His followers (John 20:21). We are reminded that He came as a servant, and now that He has returned to be with God the Father, we are to be His servants in this world.

In closing, Mr MacIver shared this quote from John Piper:

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to have a love for ‘the lost’? This is a term we use as part of our Christian jargon. Many believers search their hearts in condemnation, looking for the arrival of some feeling of benevolence that will propel them into bold evangelism. It will never happen. It is impossible to love ‘the lost’. You can’t feel deeply for an abstraction or a concept. You would find it impossible to love deeply an unfamiliar individual portrayed in a photograph, let alone a nation or a race or something as vague as ‘all lost people’.��Don’t wait for a feeling or love in order to share Christ with a stranger. You already love your heavenly Father, and you know that this stranger is created by Him, but separated from Him, so take those first steps in evangelism because you love God. It is not primarily out of compassion for humanity that we share our faith or pray for the lost; it is first of all, love for God.

Do not wait for a love to grow in you for ‘the lost’ – just remember the love that God has for you, and that you have for Him in return. Make that your starting point.