THE POOR


There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land. (Deuteronomy 15:11, NIV)

He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God. (Proverbs 14:31, NIV)


[The poor are persons] having little or no wealth and few or no possessions; lacking in financial or other resources. Although the poor will remain a part of society (Deuteronomy 15:11; Matthew 26:11), the Bible instructs the righteous to show concern for them.

God takes up the cause of the poor. The psalms repeatedly emphasize that God helps them. He will "spare the poor and needy" (Psalm 72:13). . . The poor of the world can take comfort in the fact that God cares for them.

The divine compassion for the poor is demonstrated by Jesus (Luke 6:20). Luke, who especially emphasizes concern for the poor, relates Christ's mission statement from Isaiah, "He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor" (Isaiah 61:1; Luke 4:18). The rich young man was instructed by Jesus to sell his possessions and "to distribute to the poor" (Luke 18:22). Jesus' followers cannot remain unconcerned about the poor of the world.

Instructions about considerate treatment of the poor are found in the Law, the Prophets, the Writings, and the New Testament. The Law, as well as the Prophets, warned against oppressing the poor and crushing the needy (Deuteronomy 24:14; Proverbs 14:31; Amos 2:6, 4:1). People of means were warned not to take advantage of the poor, especially in court: "You shall not pervert the judgment of your poor in his dispute" (Exodus 23:6; Amos 5:12). Help was to be given to the poor (Deuteronomy 15:7-8; Isaiah 58:7). Such help was to be motivated by God's own action of providing the underprivileged with food and clothing (Deuteronomy 10:18).

The extent to which God identifies with the poor is clear from Proverbs 19:17 and Matthew 25:34-40. Jesus instructed that the poor should be invited when a feast is prepared (Luke 14:12-14; Galatians 2:10). James warned against discrimination against the poor (Leviticus 19:15; James 2:2-4).

Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary

The Poor


Let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. (1 John 3:18, NIV)


Let's pretend that you have decided to gear down to the level where hundreds of millions of people on this planet live. Here's a starter kit on how to get there:

* First, take out the furniture: leave a few old blankets, a kitchen table, maybe a wooden chair. You've never had a bed, remember?

* Second, throw out your clothes. Each person in the family may keep the oldest suit or dress, a shirt or blouse. The head of the family has the only pair of shoes.

* Third, all kitchen appliances have vanished. Keep a box of matches, a small bag of flour, some sugar and salt, a handful of onions, a dish of dried beans. Rescue the moldy potatoes from the garbage can: those are tonight's meal.

* Fourth, dismantle the bathroom, shut off the running water, take out the wiring and the lights and everything that runs by electricity.

* Fifth, take away the house and move the family into the toolshed.

* Sixth, no more postman, fireman, government services. The two-class-room school is three miles away, but only two of your seven children attend anyway, and they walk.

* Seventh, throw out your bankbooks, stock certificates, pension plans, insurance policies. You now have a cash hoard of $5.

* Eighth, get out and start cultivating your three acres. Try hard to raise $300 in cash crops because your landlord wants one third and your moneylender 10 percent.

* Ninth, find some way for your children to bring in a little extra money so you have something to eat most days. But it won't be enough to keep bodies healthy -- so lop off 25 to 30 years of lifespan.

* * * * *

As a follower of Christ, what is my responsibility?

"If a man shuts his ear to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered. . . He who gives to the poor will lack nothing, but he who closes his eyes to them receives many curses." (Proverbs 21:13; 28:27)

"If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth." (1 John 3:17, 18)

* * * * *

PRAYER: Dear God, help me to see those less fortunate than myself through your eyes, and respond in a way that reflects the very heart of Jesus. Amen.

Dwight Hill
(Business & Professional Ministries;
a ministry of The Navigators;
unlimited permission to copy or use
is hereby granted subject to inclusion
of this copyright notice;
www.bpnavigators.org/center)

BUY WITHOUT MONEY


Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance. Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you. (Isaiah 55:1-3, NKJ)


A story was told of a wealthy man who felt his son needed to learn gratefulness. So he sent him to stay with a poor farmer's family. After one month, the son returned. The father asked, "Now don't you appreciate what we have?" The boy thought for a moment and said, "The family I stayed with is better off. With what they've planted, they enjoy meals together. And they always seem to have time for one another."

This story reminds us that money can't buy everything. Even though our bodies can live on what money can buy, money can't keep our souls from withering away. In Isaiah 55, we read: "Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat" (v.1).

Is it possible to buy what truly satisfies without money? Yes, the prophet Isaiah is pointing to the grace of God. This gift is so invaluable that no price tag is adequate. And the one who offers it - Jesus Christ - has paid the full price with His death. When we acknowledge our thirst for God, ask forgiveness for our sins, and accept the finished work of Christ on the cross, we will find spiritual food that satisfies and our soul will live forever!

He's calling, "Come to Me" (Isaiah 55:3).

Albert Lee
(Our Daily Bread,
www.rbc.org/odb)

POOR IN SPIRIT


Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3, KJV)


What it is to be poor in spirit.

To have a realizing sense of our spiritual state. In this it is implied that we understand our own guilt and helplessness, and realize as a practical fact our own utter emptiness by nature of every thing good, and of any tendency to that which is good. It is one thing to hold this in theory, and another thing to be heartily sensible of the humbling fact. Most professing Christians admit in words that they are in themselves wholly helpless and destitute, but to know and feel as an abiding practical conviction that this is their true spiritual condition how few are able!

My own experience speaks strongly here. . . The question came -- do you believe God as you believe men? Do you take his word and trust in his promise as you take the word and trust the promise of men? The answer was unavoidable -- no, I do not. . . Herein was revealed and laid open to me my infinite wickedness, that I would not trust in God's promises and rest in them, even as firmly as I would trust in the word of men. I saw it now clearly. I saw the God-dishonoring, damning (for so I viewed it) . . . fact, that while I knew, and confessed, and saw clearly that God would not and could not lie, after all I did not believe fully and with all my heart. . . And then, being led to perceive my absolute unbelief, I felt notwithstanding, that unless God pleased so to reveal himself to me . . . I should sink. I felt that unless he would give me faith in him, I was as certain to be damned as that I existed.

To be poor in spirit, is to be in a highly spiritual state. [When] a man sees himself all empty and naught, shut up to God's goodness . . . and that he lies in the hands of God as clay in the hands of the potter, for God to mold from the filthy lump a vessel of honor or dishonor as seems good in his sight; when he feels thus, and lies crucified and dead as to the least idea of self-dependence -- is this a state of weak and low spirituality? Nay verily. Scarcely can there be a state of higher spiritual exercise than this. This poverty of spirit, total renunciation of self, is far enough from being a carnal state of mind.

This state of spiritual poverty is a very healthful state of mind. It is healthful to be laid in the dust, to be emptied, and stripped, and made naked and bare; to be laid in the dust and kept there. It is the only state of mind that is safe. Of a man who is kept in such a state, I have great hopes.

These seasons of spiritual poverty are indispensable to holding on to Christ. . . See a young convert -- young converts know little of themselves or of Christ. They run well for a time, but they must be taught more of Christ, and this they can learn only by learning more of themselves. Well, Christ begins the work in a soul. The convert was all joy, but his countenance falls. Poor child! do not scold him. He is sad; he dares hardly indulge a hope. What is the matter? He desponds. You encourage him to trust in Christ and rejoice in him. But no, that will not serve the turn, that does not remove the load. Christ has undertaken a work with him -- has set about revealing him to himself, and the work will cost the poor soul many prayers, and tears, and groans, and searchings and loathings of heart.

He prayed before for sanctification and he is astonished out of measure. He receives any thing in the world but sanctification. He prayed for the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, and he verily expected some beatific sight. He thought he should see the heavens opened as Stephen did. But instead of this, what a state! He seems given over to the tender mercies of sin. Every appetite and lust is clamorous as a fiend; his passions get the mastery; he frets, and grieves, and vexes himself, and repents and sins again; he is shocked, ashamed of himself, afraid to look up, is ashamed and confounded. Poor thing! he prayed to be sanctified, and he expected Christ would smile right through the darkness, and light up his soul with unutterable joy. But no! it is all confusion and darkness. He is stumbling, and sliding, and floundering, and plunging headlong into the mire, till his own clothes abhor him, and he is brought to cry -- "Lord, O Lord, have mercy on me!"

He expected -- O what a fairy land! and he finds -- what a desert -- barren, dark, full of traps, and gins, and pitfalls; as it were the very earth conspiring with all things else, to ruin him.

Child, be not disheartened; Christ is answering your prayer. Cold professors may discourage you, but be not discouraged; you may weep and groan, but you are going through a necessary process. To know Christ, you must know yourself; to have Christ come in, you must be emptied of yourself. How will he so this for you? If you would but let go of self -- if you would but believe all that God says of you, and renounce yourself at first and at once, you might be spared many a fall; but you will not, you will believe only upon experience, and hence that experience Christ makes sure that you shall have to the full. And now, mark: whoever expects to be sanctified without a full and clear and heart-sickening revelation of his own loathsomeness, without being first shown how much he needs it, is very much mistaken. Till you have learned that, nothing you can do can avail aught; you are not prepared to receive Christ as he is offered in the gospel.

Charles Finney
(From a sermon titled
"Blessed are the Poor in Spirit",
December 4, 1844)

To be continued. Tomorrow: "Why those who are thus poor in spirit are blessed."

WHY THE POOR IN SPIRIT ARE BLESSED


Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3, KJV)


Why those who are thus poor in spirit are blessed.

1. Because the kingdom of God is within them. The text says, "Theirs is the kingdom of heaven." They have already the first elements of the kingdom of God within them.

2. Because . . . if they have come to feel and realize their state in its dreadful aggravations, flesh and blood have not revealed it unto them, but God has uncovered with his own hand the deep vileness of their souls and undertaken their cure.

3. They have already surmounted the greatest difficulty in the way of their salvation. . . God is constantly engaged in bringing about this result. When a man has come to know himself and to renounce himself in all respects as to dependence and hope, then rely upon it, the greatest difficulty is overcome.

4. It is the most painful part too. To slay him, to tear away the last fiber of hope in his own righteousness or efforts after righteousness, and burn in upon his soul a sense of his real abominable wickedness and hopeless ruin in himself -- O this costs more trouble and patience and loathing of soul, and anguish of spirit than any thing else. How many times must he be infinitely ashamed of himself -- so sunk in the lowest pit of shame, as to abhor himself with unutterable loathing! How often be compelled in agony to exclaim -- Infinite wretch that I was! How full of pride and of hell I was, and how little I knew it! To be mortified so many times in order to empty him of himself; he must weep, and agonize, and grieve, and despair so often; must undergo a perpetual dying -- for it is indeed a perpetual dying, while passing through this process of having himself shown to himself. He sees this sin and that sin, is ashamed here and ashamed there, is mortified at every turn; he dallies with temptation, breaks his resolutions, and falls into shameful sins, and is vexed and angry at himself, and ready as it were to spit in his own face; he stumbles, and plunges, and flounders and falls, till at last all hope vanishes, and the soul lies down, weary and worn out by vain struggles, and gives up in despair. All this is painful enough; but once gone through with, the man begins to understand himself thoroughly, becomes poor in spirit, glad to renounce all self, part with his own righteousness, his own wisdom, his self-dependence, because they are nothing. When he is thus thoroughly crucified the most painful work is done. If he falls from this, then he must do his first work over; but let him keep in this state of mind, continue thus poor in spirit, and the rocks and breakers are well nigh past.

5. Because he has now come to be prepared for the application of the remedy for his disease. He is in an attitude in which Christ is best pleased to see him. The thing is effected for which Christ has been laboring. Heretofore Christ has been trying to crown himself upon the mind, but self has been a constant hindrance . . . Christ would knock and knock, but to use a homely figure, the mind has been brushing up, and brushing up, and putting things to rights like an untidy housekeeper, unwilling to admit him, and trying to put matters in a little better trim instead of letting Christ in forthwith, and saying -- "Lord, thou seest what filth and rubbish are here." He is obliged to knock and keep knocking and to stand without till his head is wet with dew, and his locks are the drops of the night. The sinner is making preparations, and must become exceedingly righteous before he comes to be saved. But when Christ has convinced him of his own utter helplessness and that the more he tries to wash and cleanse his pollution, the more polluted he becomes, and that all he can do is only sinking him deeper into the horrible pit -- then, then the soul is ready to receive Christ in all his offices and relations -- to receive a whole Christ as presented in the gospel.

6. Because in a sense, such a person has already learned what the remedy is. He has learned to reject himself, and that his dependence must be utterly and forever on another than himself. He has learned how blessed it is to be nothing, to know and do nothing of himself, to be universally dependent upon Christ for every thing -- for breath, for grace, for faith, for every thing; to have Christ his "all and in all."

7. Because they learn how blessed it is to trust Christ. They see such fullness in Christ, they do not wish any strength of their own.

8. Because they have learned how to be composed in the midst of all kinds of trials. They neither have nor seek any resort in themselves. They know in whom their strength lies, and who is their strong tower. They can depend on Christ for all, and they know he cannot fail them.

9. Because they have no self interest. They have seen themselves to be perfectly destitute and worthless. They have no reputation to build up, they have no appetite that must be gratified, no passion that must be catered for, none of these to contend for or hold on to. They are emptied out, and every particle of self value is gone entirely. They labor not for themselves, but for Christ.

10. Because to be poor in spirit is to be rich in faith. Then poor in the proper sense, emptied of dependence upon themselves, then they are rich in faith.

Charles Finney
(From a sermon titled
"Blessed are the Poor in Spirit",
December 4, 1844)