Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3040
“But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinks upon me.” Psalm 40:17.
THERE is no crime and there is no credit in being poor. Everything depends upon the occasion of the poverty. Some men are poor and are greatly to be pitied, for their poverty has come upon them without any fault of their own. God has been pleased to lay this burden upon them and, therefore, they may expect to experience Divine help and ought to be tenderly considered by their Brothers and Sisters in Christ. Occasionally poverty has been the result of integrity or religion—and here the poor man is to be admired and honored. At the same time, it will be observed by all who watch with an impartial eye that very much of the poverty about us is the direct result of idleness, intemperance, improvidence and sin. There would probably not be one-tenth of the poverty there now is upon the face of the earth if the drinking shops were less frequented, if debauchery were less common, if idleness were banished and extravagance abandoned. Lovers of pleasure, (alas, that such a word should be so degraded), are great impoverishers of themselves. It is clear that there is not, of necessity, either vice or virtue in being poor and a man’s poverty cannot be judged of by itself—its causes and circumstances must be taken into consideration.
The poverty, however, to which the text relates is a poverty which I desire to cultivate in my own heart! And it is one upon which our Divine Lord has pronounced a blessing. When He sat down upon the mountain and poured forth His famous series of beatitudes, He said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” The poor in pocket may be blessed, or may not be blessed, as the case may be, but the poor in spiritare always blessed and we have Christ’s authority for so saying! Theirs is a poverty which is better than wealth! In fact, it is a poverty which indicates the possession of the truest of all riches.
It was mainly in this sense that David said, “I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinks upon me.” Certainly, in any other sense, there are vast multitudes who are “poor and needy,” but who neither think upon God, nor rejoice that God thinks upon them. Those who are spiritually “poor and needy”—the sacred beggars at Mercy’s gate, the elect mendicants of Heaven—these are the people who may say, with humble confidence, as David did, “Yet the Lord thinks upon me.”
Two things are noteworthy in the text. First, here, is a frank acknowledgment—“I am poor and needy.” But, secondly, here is a comfortable confidence—“yet the Lord thinks upon me.”
I. First, here is A FRANK ACKNOWLEDGMENT.
Some men do not object to confess that they are poor in worldly goods. In fact, they are rather fond of pleading poverty when there is a collection coming, or a subscription list in dangerous proximity. Men have even gloried in history in the name of, “The Beggars.” And, “silver and gold have I none,” has been exalted into a boast! But spiritually, it is little less than a miracle to bring men to feel, first, and then to confess their poverty, for naked, and poor, and miserable as we are by nature, we are all apt enough to say, “I am rich and increased with goods.” We cannot dig and to beg we are ashamed. If we did not inherit a penny of virtue from father Adam, we certainly inherited plenty of pride! Poor and proud we all are. We will not, if we can help it, take our seat in the lowest room, though that is our proper place. Grace alone can bring us to see ourselves in the glass of truth. To have nothing is natural to us, but to confessthat we have nothing is more than we will come to until the Holy Spirit has worked self-abasement in us. The emptiers must come up upon us for, though naturally as empty as Hagar’s bottle, yet we boast ourselves to be as full as a fountain! The Spirit of God must take from us our goodly Babylonian garment, or we shall never consent to be dressed in the fair white
linen of the righteousness of saints. What Paul flung away as dross and dung, we poor rag-collectors prize and hoard up as long as ever we can!
“I am poor and needy,” is a confession which only He who is the Truth of God can teach us to offer. If you are saying it, my Brother, you need not be afraid that you are under a desponding delusion. But, true as it is, and plain to every Grace-taught child of God, yet only Grace will make a man confess the obnoxious fact. It is not in public that we can or should confess our soul-poverty as we do in the chamber when we bow our knees secretly before God. But many of us, in secret, have been compelled, with many tears and sighs, to feel as well as to say, “I am poor and needy.” We have searched through and through, looked from the top to the bottom of our humanity and we could not find a single piece of good money in the house, so greatly reduced were we. We had not a shekel of merit, nor a penny of hope in ourselves! And we were constrained to fall flat on our face before God and confess our inability to meet His claims. And we found no comfort till, by faith, we learned to present our Lord Jesus as the Surety for His servants for good. We could not pay even the poorest composition and, therefore, cast ourselves upon the forbearance of God.