Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3512
Delivered by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“Ye have shamed the counsel of the poor, because the Lord is his refuge.”—Psalm 14:6.
GOD’S Word divides the whole human race into two portions. There is the seed of the serpent, and the seed of the woman—the children of God, and the children of the devil—those who are by nature still what they always were, and those who have been begotten again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. There are many distinctions among men, but they are not much more than surface-deep. This one distinction, however, goes right through, and it is very deep. I may say that between the two classes, the saved and the unsaved, there is a great gulf fixed. There is as wide a difference between the righteous and the wicked as there is between the living and the dead. The Psalmist, David, in this particular Psalm calls one class of men fools, and another class the poor. You will observe that he begins by describing the fool, by which he does not mean one particular man. but the whole race as it is by nature—the whole of that portion of the human race that remains unregenerate. In our text he describes another class as the poor, in which he comprehends all the saved, all the godly, all the righteous, of whom our Redeemer hath said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Now from the very first, between the two seeds there has always been an enmity—an enmity which has never been mitigated, and never will. It displays itself in various ways, but it is always there. In some ages the enmity has burst forth into open persecution—Herod has sought the young child to destroy it; Haman has sought to destroy the whole generation of Israel; stakes have been erected, and the faithful have been burnt; racks and inhuman engines of cruelty have been fashioned by the art of man, through the malice of his heart, to exterminate, if it were possible, the children of the living God. For there is war—perpetually war to the knife—war ever between the two generations. At this particular time the warfare is not less bitter; but the restraints of Providence do not allow it to display itself as it once did, and it now generally takes the form of cruel mockings so that our text is as applicable to the present race as it was in David’s time, “Ye have shamed the counsel of the poor, because the Lord is his refuge.” The fool bath made a mock of the righteous man, called the poor man; and this has been the subject of his mockery, that the godly man has been fool enough as he calls him, to put his trust in God, and to make this the main point and purpose of his life. There may be some here who have done this; all of us do it to some extent until we are new-born. We ridicule, if not with the tongue, yet in our heart, those who have made God their refuge, for when we begin to value the people of God, it is a sign of some degree of grace in us: “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren”; but until we come into that state of grace there is a hatred or contempt, more or less developed, against those who are resting in the living God.
Now I shall at this time first of all speak of those who are mocked; secondly, of the mockers; and thirdly, of how those who are mocked might to behave towards those who try to put them to shame. First, then, let us take the subject—the object—of the mockery of carnal minds.
I. Who Are Mocked
Here we have three points: “Ye have shamed the poor,” that is, the persons; “the counsel of the poor,” that is the reasons of their faith; then their faith itself, “because the Lord is his refuge.”
To begin, it is very common for ungodly men to pour contempt upon God’s people, the poor; and oftentimes they will do it by the use of these words. It so happens that many of God’s people are poor in pocket, and how often do hear the observation, “Oh! these Methodists, these Presbyterians, these Baptists, they are a set of poor people, mechanics, and servant-girls and so on,” and how often is that uttered with a sneer upon the lips! Well now, that is a fine thing to make fun of, isn’t it, for, after all, what is there to be ashamed of in honest poverty? I will stand here and say that if I could stand to-morrow morning in Cheapside, and pick out a dozen poor men, and then if I were to pick out a dozen middle-class men, and then if I were to pick out a dozen rich men, I believe, as to character, they would be very much of a muchness. You shall go, if you will, and pick out at random twelve good princes, and see if you could do it; but I will pick you out twelve working men that shall be honest, and upright, and chaste—which great men are not always. The poor are no worse than the rich, and have no more right to be despised. And if it were true that all who fear God were poor, it might, perhaps, be rather to their credit than to their dishonour, for, at any rate, nobody would be able to say that their Dockets were lined with the result of fraud. If they were poor, they would, at any rate, be free from many of the accusations that might be brought against rich men. I care no more for one class than another, especially when I preach the gospel—you are all alike to me, one as the other—but this I will say, that of all jests and all sneers that is one of the most ridiculous and mean against godly people, because they are poor.