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Most of us feel satisfied if we manage not to do evil—if we avoid the obvious wrongs, the cruelties we can see. But there’s a quieter failure Proverbs 3:27–28 names: the moment when you know exactly what good you could do, right now, and you choose not to do it. Google once promised not to be evil as it rose above other tech firms, yet the real challenge—for companies and individuals alike—comes in everyday decisions about whether to give good or hold it back. When does restraint from wrongdoing become complicity with harm?
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Have you used Google today? More than likely, I’d imagine you have, because most of us do. Now, those of you that know me know I love to use Bing as my search engine, but even when I use Bing, I still tell people I’m Googling because it’s become a generic word. We just use Google because it’s so predominant. Like grabbing for a Kleenex, we Google when we want to look something up. And we don’t just Google information. We get our email through Google. We use Google’s AI. We use Google Maps. We look for products using Google Shopping and check the news via Google News. Google is incredibly present.
But at one point, Google was a scrappy upstart. And a scrappy upstart with an interesting motto: Don’t be evil. Hi, welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad that you’re here with me tonight. If you would, hit that like and that share button. Help others join us as we’re going through God’s Word tonight, because we’re going to be thinking about how we stay focused on what really matters and how we go beyond just not being evil to doing good.
Google, when it had that motto, what was the point? Well, back in 1999, when Google was founded, there were all kinds of different tech companies. They were viewed as big monoliths that generally didn’t care that much about the people. Certainly, that was how people were thinking, in many ways, rightly so, about Microsoft at the time, which was doing all kinds of things that were not good for other companies or even their users but would help them stay in power.
Well, in the midst of all that, this little scrappy upstart with two guys that had a vision for how to make a better search engine to help us find information started. As they went about it, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, they decided to give the motto, “Don’t be evil.” What was the point of Google? It was to go and do something better than everybody else, not to do that evil stuff that other tech companies did. It was very clear early on. You’d search. If you remember those early days of Google searches, the results were always really, really good. There weren’t a bunch of junk pages.
Crucially, while other search engines had all kinds of flashing banner ads and so on, Google had few ads, if any. Even once they added ads, they were clearly marked. They were in a different shaded area. They were plain text. They didn’t distract. And even the ads were often accurate to what you were looking for. It’s a totally different thing.
But many have observed, Google doesn’t talk about “Don’t be evil” anymore. They don’t ever bring it up. And a lot of the things they railed against, they now actually encourage. No company on the internet does a better job of watching you and tracking you and trying to turn you into a product than Google. That’s where they make all their money. I thought about that. They went from trying to not be evil to doing things that many of us would consider probably a little bit on the evil side.
How did that happen? How does that happen with us? Because it’s not just some big company that we can throw rocks at. It’s us. We say, “Well, I’m not going to do evil today.” And then we do evil. How do we do that? And how do we instead go the direction that God wants us to go? Well, that’s what we’re going to be thinking about tonight.
So let’s dig into this next part of Proverbs 3 and open with prayer. Would you pray with me, please? Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for your word. Would you help us to do more than don’t be evil? Would you help us to do good, to do what’s pleasing to you? Lord, guide us, we pray. Help us to do what you want us to do, we ask in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
We’re going to be looking at this in two parts over the next two weeks. First, do good, and then we’re going to go back to don’t be evil next week. But it leads with the do good part, because what we’re going to see is it’s a lot easier to do good directly than to try to fulfill don’t be evil. And the way we start by doing good is to not withhold good. That’s what we see in Proverbs 3, verse 27: “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it.” Don’t withhold.
That’s more than not being evil, because there’s kind of a whole spectrum there if you think about it. You can be outright evil. You can not be evil. You can be doing good when you feel like it but withholding a lot of good. Or you can just go and do good and be someone who’s actually exemplified by doing good and not for the sake of salvation, but rather in response to it. That’s what God calls us to do. Why? Because that’s what God does for us. He doesn’t just withhold the evil we deserve. He gives us the good we don’t deserve. So as Christians, we should go ahead and do more than withhold evil.
Now, people have noted rightly that this applies to those who are wealthy and who are leaders and others that have significant power to do good, but we’re doing it a disservice if we limit it to certain people who have extreme ability, whether with wealth or power. It comes down to each and every one of us. Each and every one of us. We don’t have to be Google with 90% of the internet searches to decide if we’re going to withhold evil or do good or just embrace evil. Each and every one of us can choose: Are we going to do good today or are we going to do evil?
And so often that place where we’re going to struggle is exactly the place that’s targeting us here: withholding it. Because if we have to do something, many of us say, “Well, yeah, I want to do the good thing. But how often do I know the good thing I could do for someone, but I can just passively choose not to do it, and I embrace that. I’m tired, I’m busy. It’s really easy to do.” Proverbs says, don’t do that.
Applies to everybody. It applies to the average person doing work and deciding, “Am I going to just not get in trouble, just not violate the regulations, or am I going to do excellence for my company, even if they don’t deserve it?” It involves all of us. We walk down the street and we see someone in need. Are we going to figure out whether we should do something for that person or not? Sometimes it’s even the people we often vilify that we need to do good for, right?
For example, if we owe money to a lender, part of doing good is giving that money back, even if we think that they’re charging us too much interest or not treating us right. Here’s the thing, and the language here actually seems to imply sort of that lending sense as it applies to the whole of life, which is that we owe good to the people around us. You might not feel that way. Well, what did this person do to deserve it? God says, well, look at what I’ve given you. You are now someone commissioned to go and do good.
And when we withhold good, even that good that we get away with because no one would know we could have even done it, we’re actually depriving something of a blessing that we owe them because we’re people who have the opportunity to bless. God doesn’t view the omission of sin and the omission of good as neutral. When we fail to do good, He views that as actually choosing to do bad because not giving someone something that could help them out when we know it could help them out, and we have the ability to help them out, is actually choosing to put them in a worse place, even if they don’t know it.
It’s not about whether people can point fingers at us, it’s whether God has given us the ability and we choose not to. Now, I know we can think of a bunch of objections to this. Well, if I did something good for every person that would like good, then I couldn’t do it for anyone because I’d run out of resources, I’d run out of time, I’d wear myself out. The point here isn’t to completely run yourself dry, but that’s the extreme. A lot of times it’s not that big a deal, right?
When we can encourage someone and we just think, “Well, I don’t feel like encouraging today. I’m just going to walk by. I’m not going to say that encouragement.” So tempting. So tempting. God says, go ahead and do that good. Do more than don’t be evil. You don’t have to say, “Well, I didn’t nitpick my co-workers today, so if I don’t say anything good, I didn’t nitpick. I wasn’t evil.” God says, go and actually give the good that you can.
I read about a journalist this week who passed, and one of the obituaries I read was so touching because what the person writing it said was that this was a man who was completely sincere but always had a kind and encouraging word for the people he talked to because he could see whomever it was he was talking to, what good they were doing, and encouraged them in that even if there were things he disagreed with them on, even if there were things he didn’t like about them or didn’t think were right about what they were doing.
And that struck me as I thought about this passage because how often is it we say, “Well, I don’t like this person. I don’t like what they’re doing. There’s a bunch of things they’re doing really stupid. I could nitpick this.” And yet God says, “Well, do you see that one or two things that are actually good? Why don’t you focus on that and actually offer good rather than only withholding evil?” God wants us to be an active force of blessing in this world. That’s what he’s calling us to.
A few weeks ago, we talked about rabies. Sort of a sobering topic, a disconcerting one when you think about how once it hits, nothing can be done. But if you noticed, I kind of couched that language a few weeks ago because there’s something called the Milwaukee Protocol.
Twenty years ago, a young woman of 15 was at church when a bat flew into the church. And she loved animals. And so she asked her mom if she could help capture the bat as the deacons in the church were in consternation trying to catch it. And she managed to catch it and carry it outside. But as she did, the bat bit her.
Well, it was just a little pinprick. She didn’t think about it. Went back to her life for about three weeks until she started to show signs of rabies. Well, what most of us know intrinsically from when we’re fairly young and we hear about this scary thing called rabies: she’s doomed, right? There’s nothing that can be done.
But Dr. Rodney Willoughby, who was at the hospital she went to, heard about her case. He was brand new to the hospital and thought, “Well, I guess I could try to comfort her until she dies, help the family however I can until she dies.” But he had ideas of what maybe could be done. And rather than simply choosing not to be a discouraging force, he decided to try everything he could to save this one. Because he did, Jenna’s alive today. She’s a teacher and living a fairly normal life with very few, some, but very few side effects from what she went through.
You see, this doctor thought the brain usually gets overloaded by the toxins that come in through rabies. What if I could put her in a coma, keep her body as supported as I possibly could, and keep her in that reduced activity state until antivirus treatments and her own immune system could suppress the rabies virus? That’s exactly what he did. And she survived because the doctor didn’t just opt to not be evil and not do some kind of medical malpractice, but actually to go above and beyond what anyone would have expected him to do to save this young woman, who’s now in her mid-30s and living a normal life because he didn’t withhold good. He took something that seems hopeless and he still did good.
How often do we look at cases that seem hopeless and we withhold good because we think it’s not going to do any good anyway? And we don’t know how God’s going to work in those cases where we just don’t know what could be done, what could help. Boy, is this challenging, isn’t it? Because I can think of all kinds of times where I probably withhold good because I just think it’s a hopeless cause anyway. And it’s so tempting because we do get worn out and it just sounds easier. I can’t do anymore.
I think that, I feel that, and at times I just keep cruising along and pretend I didn’t know the opportunity was there. Maybe even convince myself I didn’t know the opportunity was there because I just don’t want to deal with it. Would have been so much easier for Dr. Willoughby to pretend there wasn’t even an idea in his head that he could do. Because doing all the extra work? Well, yeah, in the end he got to be hailed a hero, but he didn’t know it would work and it didn’t seem like it would probably work. And there was a good chance he put in all that effort and just be viewed as a doctor who went after a hopeless cause and wasted a bunch of time and a bunch of treatment.
But no, he saved a woman’s life. What can we do? Not just the things that we’re mean and hold back on, but those things we just ignore because we don’t even think about it or we’re just too busy or we figure someone else can do it. God says, don’t withhold good if you know you can give it. Because if you know you can give it and you have the ability, you’ve been blessed with the ability to do something, bless others with it.
And critically, second part, verse 28, “Don’t delay in doing it. Do not say to your neighbor, go and come again tomorrow and I will give it when you have it with you.” Now, we, of course, rattle off the motto, better late than never. And there’s a sense in which that’s true, right? If we can help someone and we’re late doing it, but we finally say, “Okay, I’ll do it,” well, that’s better than not doing it at all, perhaps.
But God says, how about this? Why don’t you just do it when you can? A lot of times it’s because we’re having that internal monologue in our head, right? I actually dialogue because you’re arguing with yourself. How often do I do that? Should I do this? Shouldn’t I do this? Should I do this? Should I do this? And if I end up doing it and helping someone, I end up doing it late because I’ve been arguing with myself on whether I really need to do it.
Proverbs say, go and actually help the person, go beyond not being evil, go and be good, and go and be good as soon as you can. When you realize that it’s possible, go and do it. Because thankfully, God doesn’t wait and leave us strung along. He helps us. And he helped us even before we were born. Think about that, how amazing that is.
Now, of course, in the society of that time, it was all the more critical. Take a look at Deuteronomy chapter 24. It reads, “You must not oppress the lowly and poor servant, whether one from among your fellow Israelites or the resident foreigners who are living in your lands and villages. You must pay his wage that very day before the sun sets, for he is poor and his life depends on it. Otherwise, he will cry out to the Lord against you and you will be guilty of sin.”
There’s an old maxim that encapsulates what’s being described here. It says, “He gives twice, who gives promptly.” And it’s sort of the counterpoint to that idea that it’s better to give late than never, especially in a culture like this.
You think about the ancient world. One of the groups mentioned here in this text, just look again, are the lowly and the poor servant and even the resident foreigners. In the ancient world, if you were a migrant moving from country to country, even more so than today, you didn’t have a lot of status and you were in a lot of danger. And maybe you traveled from place to place trying to escape a famine or violence or whatever it was. You arrive and someone hires you and says, “Well, I’ll pay you at the end of the week.” Well, that person maybe had gone a long time already without eating.
Maybe pushing it that far was a bad idea. Maybe pushing it that much further would actually cause that person to die before he’s paid, even though it was perfectly within the field owner’s rights to choose not to pay until that time. Living at a subsistence level like people did then, we talk about living day to day, paycheck to paycheck to day, and it’s a real thing.
But when we compare it to how people lived then, the social safety nets we have, the welfare programs, all those sorts of things, they’re not perfect, but would have seemed like utter luxury compared to people of those times where if you ran out of money, no one was going to offer you some free food or a place to stay, even in the extreme hot or cold period. You were just going to die.
And so the Proverbs say, if there’s someone who is serving you and you have the ability to give that person his wage right now, even though you’re not obliged to do it, don’t withhold it. And then that extends to blessing in general. If we have the ability to bless someone, we don’t know how people are living day to day, moment by moment, paycheck to paycheck, emotionally, out of fear, out of worry, out of just confusion. We don’t know where people are at. And God says, don’t worry about whether the person can make it till the next time that you have to do something good. Can you do it right now? You have it? Do it.
And I think the habit part is a crucial part. With that fear, are we going to run ourselves dry? God doesn’t say, even if you can’t do it anyway. No. He says, if you have the ability, right? If you have that moment and you can be a listening ear, give that moment. If someone’s in need and you have some money in your pocket that you can help that person with, help them.
Again, we’re not talking about being foolish and naive, but so often it’s not those extreme cases where we’re being foolish and naive. It’s simply because we choose not to. And we think, I’m not being evil. I’m not kicking the person while they’re down. I’m simply not choosing to do this extra good. God says, if you can do the extra good, do the extra good. He gives twice, who gives promptly.
How often is it that when we need to be blessed by someone and someone finally does something for us and we’re thankful for it. But we also know internally, if only it could have happened a day earlier, an hour earlier, maybe even a few minutes earlier, it would have been so much more of a blessing. We get that maximum and that’s what’s being expressed here. We have those chances. Take them. Don’t just see if we can get away with it.
After that discovery of the Milwaukee Protocol, it hasn’t been where everyone said, don’t worry about treating rabies as soon as you’ve been bitten. Don’t go and get the shots. No, all the advice, all the advice is still go and do what we’ve always thought you should do.
Because the thing is, if you go and get the vaccine, there is a virtual 100% chance of recovery. You receive the vaccine, you’re not going to die of rabies. It’s pretty well, almost straightforward, about as much as anything in the medical world.
And so why not do it? Because here’s the thing. While the Milwaukee Protocol is amazing, and Dr. Willoughby choosing to do it is amazing, there’s that one case of someone surviving with it. And there’s 64 documented cases after that of people trying Dr. Willoughby’s protocol who died still.
Now, why did Jenna survive and these others did not? Did he just time everything perfectly? Maybe. Was this young woman of 15 in particularly good health, and she was only 15 and so on, and so she made it? Maybe. We don’t fully understand why still. And certainly, if I had a loved one dying of rabies, I’d still want them to try everything all the way up through this Milwaukee Protocol. Why not? It’s a whole lot better than just saying, “Well, I guess we’ll say our goodbyes. There’s nothing that can be done.”
It’s good that Dr. Willoughby didn’t withhold good, even though he could have. He did that, and there’s a young woman alive. At the same time, how much better to get the timely treatment? And we are those who can administer that timely treatment to others in this world. God says, “I have given you an abundance of blessing. I have given you my love and my care. I’ve given it, even when you don’t deserve it, and given it to you before you were even born. Now give it to other people as well. Don’t withhold the blessing that I did not withhold from you.”
What an amazing thing it is when we choose to give people what they need right now. Because maybe even if we’re ultimately going to help that person, we’re helping them through a medically-induced coma, trying to somehow get them through, eking through maybe kind of what we could have just done the right thing earlier and made their lives so much more of a blessing.
God says, I don’t want you to just avoid being evil. I want you to do good. If you describe two different medical treatments, and one was inducing someone in a coma and using all kinds of high-tech medicine and doing all these sorts of things to treat a deadly disease like rabies, and the other was, well, we’ll give the person a couple shots, you’d say the more complicated one was the more heroic, right? And in the case where it’s too late for the shots, absolutely it is.
But that little thing actually has a bigger impact, right? A couple shots and the person doesn’t have any side effects from rabies, doesn’t struggle in any way, it’s just taken care of. And that’s how it is with what God calls us to do. That kind word, that encouragement that we think we can get away without even saying, that we’re doing enough by not nitpicking, that we’re doing enough by not turning someone in when they’ve done something wrong instead of actually helping them get out of it.
That little thing, and we think it’s not going to do any good. We don’t know when it will. It’s like what Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians when he talks about the different people who walked through the process of sowing and planting and harvesting. We don’t always see a big impact. Just like if you’re first tilling the field, you don’t necessarily, if you go on and work somewhere else, get to see the corn growing to its heights.
And yet each part contributes until the final harvest comes. God’s saying you’re part of that. And that little thing that you think is too little so you could just go ahead and skip it because it doesn’t matter anyway might be the thing that actually matters. It’s that shot that keeps someone from developing a terrible, terrible disease.
We live in a world with a whole bunch of don’ts. But God gives us a simple do: do good as we are those who live in the good that God has already done for us. We’re already saved. We’re already saved. We’re already enjoying the freedom that we have in Christ. So because of that, go and do good, knowing that good will last. And that good can bless others from generation to generation to generation.
Would you pray with me, please? Father, a lot of times we feel like we’ve hit a big victory if we can just avoid being evil. But Lord, you call us to be more than those who live by “don’t be evil.” You want us to live by a different motto: do good just as our God is good. And Lord, would you help us to be those people? And to be those people not because we’re going to earn your favor through that, but because we know that we have your favor, that you have done that good for us. And all who call on the name of the Lord receive your love and your salvation. And because of that, we can be those who do good for others with confidence.
We pray this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
I hope this has been an encouragement to you tonight. And one of those little things you could do is giving this a share right now. I know that sounds like a little thing, but that little thing could show someone who just needs to hear an encouragement from God’s word. Maybe they’ll start coming every week. We’ve had that happen. So hit that share button, hit that like button. It makes a difference, even though it seems so small, maybe even a little silly.
If there’s any way I can be encouraging you today, if you’re struggling with what does it mean to be good? And how is it that we receive salvation and yet we’re supposed to do good? If you want to talk through any of that, you can always use our texting line at 833-356-4032 or the comments below. It is great to hear from you. 833-356-4032. Comments below if you’d like to have us all join you. Have us all join in together as a community and talk, or if you just want to talk to someone on our prayer team, that texting line is great. Either way, we’d like to do it be a blessing for you.
And so if you could use that prayer, that encouragement, please do reach out tonight. Hope you have a wonderful and blessed week, and I’ll see you again next week.
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