This seems to be true all the way through the Bible. There's this one time, in a place called Sodom and Gomorrah where - Ezekiel 16 - it says: for the sins of Sodom I destroyed Sodom. Now what do you think the sins of Sodom would be? Sodomy, like we named it after the place. I mean listen, when your name becomes a verb, it's a bad day right? You don't want that right? If you walked out of here tonight, and go: man, he Shane-Willarded me - I don't even know what that means, but that's bad. You don't want your name to become a verb. It says: for the sins of Sodom I destroyed Sodom. You would think the sin would be homosexuality, but you know it didn't even make the list? This is what it said. For the sins of Sodom I destroyed Sodom, and her sins were: pride, apathy, laziness, gluttony, and overlooking poor people. It's greed, selfishness, thinking you're better than other people, eating more than you have to, when someone else is starving. It was refusing to be a kingdom person, to bring the kingdom to this world - it was that.
Check out this scripture, Matthew 25:31. Matthew 25, this is Jesus' last sermon. It's His last words - right after this, He gets arrested. Now when someone gives you his last words, it's very important to listen to what they're saying, and Jesus is saying: at the end of the age, when I'm judging the whole world, here's how I'm going to judge them. Pay attention, because I'm the one doing it. Matthew 25:31 - but when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He'll sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations shall be gathered before Him, and He shall separate them from one another, as a shepherd divides sheep from goats. And indeed He shall set the sheep on His right, but the goats on His left. Listen, when you're standing in front of Jesus one day, you want to be on His right; so move to your left okay?
Then the King shall say to those on His right: come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Then He tells them why: for when I was hungry, you gave Me food. When I was thirsty, you gave Me drink. When I was a stranger, you took Me in. When I was naked, you clothed Me. When I was sick, you visited Me. When I was in prison, you came to Me. Now look at the next verse, look at the wording. Then the righteous - now 2,106 scriptures talk about righteous people have a generous spirit, so you could easily say then the Ha Tzedak, the people doing tzedakah, the people feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked, and this kind of stuff. Then the righteous shall answer Him: Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You a drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? When did we see You sick or in prison, and came to You? And the King will answer them saying: truly I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to the least of these, you did it to Me.
Then He will say to those on His left: depart from Me you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. Why? For when I was hungry, you gave Me no food. When I was thirsty, you gave Me no drink. When I was a stranger, you didn't take Me in. When I was naked, you didn't clothe Me. When I was sick and in prison you didn't visit Me. Then they will answer Him saying: when did we see You hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick, prison, and did not minister to You? Then He will answer them, saying: truly I say to you, in as much as you did not do it to the least of these, you did not do it to Me. Here's the last line of that sermon: And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into everlasting life.
So in Matthew 25, His criteria of judgement was Tzedakah. Let me ask you a question. If you had to face Jesus today, would you be on the right, or would you be on the left? I'll ask another way. He took care of the poor and the afflicted; is this not what it means to know Me declares the Lord. Do you know Him? How important is it to develop a righteous spirit, a tzedakah spirit? Listen, this is from Matthew, this is Jesus. I love this. He says: when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites in the synagogues do on the street, to be honoured by men. I tell you the truth, they've received their reward in full; but when you give to the needy, don't let your left hand know what your right hand's doing, so your giving is in secret. Then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. It's so important. He's talking about how even generosity can sometimes have a bad heart; so He says: you don't want your light to be darkness.