THE DUTY OF REMEMBERING THE POOR PREACHED ON BEHALF OF THE AGED PILGRIMS’ FRIEND SOCIETY – Charles Spurgeon
THE DUTY OF REMEMBERING THE POOR
Preached on Behalf of the Aged Pilgrims’ Friend Society
“Only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also was forward to do.” Galatians 2:10.
Introduction: The Relationship Between Poverty and Virtue
Poverty is no virtue. Wealth is no sin. On the other hand, wealth is not morally good, and poverty is not morally evil. A man may be a good man and a rich man. It is quite certain that very frequently good men are poor men. Virtue is a plant that depends not upon the atmosphere which surrounds it, but upon the hand which waters it and the divine grace which sustains it. We draw no support for grace from our circumstances, whether they are good or evil. Our circumstances may sometimes militate against the gracious work in our breast, but it is quite certain that no position in life is a sustaining cause of the life of grace in the soul. That must always be maintained by divine power, which can work as well in poverty as in riches—for we see some of the finest specimens of the full development of Christianity in those who are the very meanest in temporal circumstances—far outshining those whom we would have imagined, from their position in society, would have had many things to assist their virtues and sustain their graces. Grace is a plant that draws no nourishment from the wilderness in which it grows. It finds nothing to feed upon in the heart of man—all it lives upon, it receives supernaturally. It sends all its roots upwards, none downwards. It draws no support from poverty and none from riches. Gold cannot sustain grace—on the other hand—rags cannot make it flourish. Grace is a plant which derives the whole of its support from God, the Holy Spirit, and is, therefore, entirely independent of the circumstances of man.
God Has A Poor People
But yet, mark you—it is an undeniable fact that God has been pleased, for the most part, to plant His grace in the soil of poverty. He has not chosen many great, nor many mighty men of this world but He has “chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, to be heirs of the kingdom of God.” We should wonder why, were we not quite sure that God is wise in His choice! We cannot dispute a fact which Scripture teaches and which our own observation supports, that the Lord’s people are, to a very large extent, the poor of this world! Very few of them wear crowns. Very few ride in carriages. Only a proportion of them have a competence. A very large multitude of His family are destitute, afflicted, tormented and are kept leaning, day by day, upon the daily provisions of God and trusting Him from meal to meal, believing that He will supply their needs out of the riches of His fullness.
Now, tonight, we shall, first of all, mention the fact that God has a poor people; secondly, the duty—we should remember the poor; and then, thirdly, the obligation for us to perform this duty—for there are sundry reasons why we ought to be especially mindful of the poor of the Lord’s flock.
I. The Lord Has A Poor People
A fact notorious to us all—which daily observation confirms. Why does the Lord have a poor people? This is a question that might suggest itself to us and we might not, at all times, find it easy to answer if we were poor ourselves. God could make them all rich if He pleased. He could lay bags of gold at their doors. He could send whole rivers of supplies where now it is a desert! He could scatter round their houses abundance of provisions—as once He made the quails lie in very heaps round the camp of Israel—so now He could rain bread out of heaven to feed them! There is no necessity that they should be poor, only as it pleases His sovereign will. “The cattle upon a thousand hills are His,” He could supply them. He could make the rich men of this world give up all their wealth, if He so pleased to turn their minds. He could make the richest, the greatest and the mightiest bring all their power and riches to the feet of His children, for the hearts of all men are in His control! But He does not choose to do so. He allows them to suffer need. He allows them to pine in penury and obscurity. Why is this? I believe that is a question we should not find easy to answer if we were in the circumstances, but seeing that many of us are out of the affliction, we may, perhaps, hint at one or two reasons why the Lord God has had—has and always will have—a poor people in this world!
Reasons Why God Has A Poor People
To Teach Us Gratitude
I think one reason is to teach us how grateful we should be for all the comforts He bestows on many of us. One of the sweetest meals I think I have ever eaten was after beholding a spectacle of penury which had made me weep. When we see others needing daily bread, does not our loaf at once taste very sweet? It may have been very dry—but we saw someone begging for bread in the streets—and we thanked God for what we had that day, when we knew that others wanted. When we take our walks abroad and see the poor, he must be but a very poor Christian who does not lift up his eyes to heaven and thank his God thus— “Not more than others I deserve, But God has given me more.” If we were all made rich, alike, if God had given us all abundance, we would never know the value of His mercies—but He puts the poor side by side with us—to make their trials, like a dark shadow, set forth the brightness which He is pleased to give to us in temporal matters. Oh, you would never thank God half as much if you did not see your cause for thankfulness by marking the needs of others! Oh, you dainty ones who can scarcely eat the food that is put before you, it would do you good if you could sit down at the table of the poor! Oh, you discontented ones who are always murmuring at your households because all kinds of delicacies are not provided for you—it would do you good if you could sit down for a while to workhouse fare and sometimes eat a little less than that and fast a day or two, to find your appetites! Yes, you who never sing a song of praise to God, it would be no small benefit to you if you were, for once, made to need His bounties! Then you might be led to thank God for all His abundant supplies. Even Christians need a spur to their thankfulness. God gives us a great many mercies we never thank Him for. Day by day His mercies come, but day by day we forget them! His mercies lie— “Forgotten in unthankfulness, And without praises die.” Put you out in the cold some winter’s night and would you not thank God for the fire, afterwards? Make you thirst for a little while and how grateful would be the cup of water! Now, if God has not exposed us in this way, it is at least an instance of His wisdom that He has placed others in that position, to teach those of His family who are more highly favored in temporal matters how thankful they ought to be for the gifts of His providence!
To Display His Sovereignty
That, however, I take it, is but a very low view of the matter. There are other and higher and better reasons! God is pleased to always have a poor people that He may display His sovereignty in all He does. If there were no poor saints, we would not so strongly believe the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. Or, at least, if the saints believed it as they always must and will, yet the wicked and those who despise it would not have so clear an evidence of it. Then they would not sin against such great Light of God which shines upon their poor, dark, blind eyeballs from evident displays of sovereignty in salvation! Those who deny divine sovereignty, deny it in the face of all testimony—certainly in the teeth of Scripture, for it is positively affirmed there! And God, in order that there may be something besides Scripture, has made His providence bear out the written Word and has caused many of His children to be the despised among the people. “I take whom I please,” says God. “You would have Me choose kings and queens, first—I choose their humble servants in their kitchens before I choose their masters and mistresses in their banqueting halls! You would have Me take the counselor and the wise man—I take the fool, first, that I may teach you to despise the wisdom of man! I take the poor before the rich, that I may humble all your pride and teach you there is nothing in man that makes Me choose him—but that it is My sovereign will, alone, which creates men, heirs of grace.” I bless God that there are poor saints, for they teach me this lesson—that God will do as He pleases with His own. They show me manifestly that however much men may deny the sovereignty of God, they cannot rob Him of it—that He will still exert it to the very last—as long as this earth shall stand and may find ways of exerting it, even in future ages! Certainly the existence of a poor people in the world is proof positive in the mind of the saint and a plain and bold affirmation to the most obtuse intellect of the sinner, that there is a sovereignty of God in the choice of men.
To Display the Power of His Comforting Promises
Again—God has a poor people, I take it, that He may display more the power of His comforting promises and the supports of the gospel. If all God’s saints were well-to-do in this world and never lacked, we would scarcely realize the value of the gospel half as much, oh, my brothers and sisters, when we find some that have not where to lay their heads, who yet can say, “Still will I trust in the Lord.” When we see some who have nothing but bread and water who still glory in Jesus—when we see them “wondering where the scene shall end,” seeing that, “every day new straits attend,” and yet having faith in Christ, oh, what honor it reflects on the gospel! Let my rich friend, there, stand up and say, “I have faith in God for tomorrow with regard to my daily bread.” You would say, “My dear friend, I do not at all wonder at it, for you have plenty of money at home to buy your bread with and a salary coming in on such a day. There is not much opportunity for faith in your case.” But when some poor Habakkuk rises and exclaims, “Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall there be fruit in the vine,” and so on, “Yet will I trust in the Lord.” Ah, then that shows the power of all-supporting grace!
To Plague the Devil
God often allows His people to be a tried and a poor people, just to plague the devil. The devil was never more plagued in his life, I think, than he was with Job. As long as Job was rich, Job caused much envy in Satan—but he never made him as angry as when he was poor! It was then that Satan was the most incensed against him because, after all his trials, he would not curse God and die. You know, if a man thinks he can do a thing, he will always wrap himself up in his self-complacency till he tries to do it and then fails. So Satan thinks he may overthrow one or other of God’s children. “Now, Satan,” says God, “I will give you an opportunity of trying your skill. One of My children is very poor. I will cut off his bread and water. I will give him the water of affliction to drink and the bread of bitterness to eat. He shall be exceedingly tried. Take him, Satan, drag him through fire and water and see what you can do with him.” So Satan tries to starve out the divine Life from his soul—but he cannot do it—and he finds, after all he has done, that he is defeated and he goes away plagued, vexed and feeling another hell within himself, though miserable enough before, because he was foiled in all his attempts to tread out the spark of life in the heart of God’s child.
To Give Us a Living Glimpse of Christ
Furthermore, the design of our heavenly Father in allowing a poor people in this world and keeping His people poor, when He might make them rich, is possibly to give us some living glimpse of Christ. A poor man is the image of Jesus Christ, if he is a Christian. All Christians are the image of Jesus Christ, for the sanctifying influence of Christ exerted on them has made them, in some degree, like their Master. But the poor man is like his Master not only in his character, but in his circumstances, too. When you look on a poor saint, you have a better picture of Jesus than you have in a rich saint. The rich saint is a member of Christ. He has the image of his Master stamped upon him and that image shall be perfected when he shall arrive in heaven. But the poor saint has something else—he has not only the most prominent feature—but the background and the foreground all in the picture! He has the circumstances of it! Look at his brown hands, hardened by toil—such were his Savior’s once. Look at his weary feet, blistered with his journeying—such were his Savior’s many a time. He sits upon a well from weariness, as his Lord once did. He has nowhere to rest, nor had his Master—foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but He had nowhere to lay His head. He is fed by charity, so was his Master—others supplied His needs. Look! He sits down at an invited table, so did his Master—He had not one of His own! You see Christ, then. You see as much of Christ as you will see just yet—until you are taken up where you shall be like He is—and see Him as He is. He would have us always remember the Savior’s poverty—“How He was rich and yet, for our sakes, became poor.”
To Give Us Opportunities to Show Our Love to Him
But now one more reason and I have done with this part of the subject. The Lord has a poor people in the midst of us for this reason—that He determines to give us opportunities of showing our love to Him. Now we show our love to Christ when we sing of Him, and when we pray to Him, but if there were no poor people in the world, we would often say within ourselves, “Oh, how I wish there was one of Christ’s brethren that I could help. I would like to give Christ something. I would like to show my Master that I love Him, not by words, only, but by deeds, too.”
II. The Duty to Remember the Poor
The second thing we shall endeavor to speak of is the duty here alluded to—“They would that we should remember the poor.” “Remember the poor.” That word, “remember,” is a very comprehensive word. We ought to remember the poor in our prayers. I need not remind you to offer supplication for the rich, but remember the poor. Remember them and pray that God would comfort and cheer them in all the trials of their penury, that He would supply their needs out of the riches of His fullness! Let the angel touch you on the arm when you have nearly finished your prayers and say, “Remember the poor. Remember the poor of the flock.” Let your prayers always go up to heaven for them.
III. The Obligation to Remember the Poor
Now, allow me to press home this obligation—why should we remember the poor? I shall not urge it upon the ground of common philanthropy and charity—that were a too mean and low way of addressing Christians, although even they, perhaps, might be benefited by it. I shall urge it in another way. “Remember the poor,” because they are your Lord’s brethren. What? Do you not feel, like David, that you would do anything for Jonathan’s sake? And if he has some poor sick son, some Mephibosheth, lame in his feet, will you not seat him at your table, or give him a maintenance, if you can, seeing that Jonathan’s blood is in his veins? Remember, beloved, the blood of Jesus runs in the veins of poor saints! They are His relatives! They are His friends and if that moves you not, remember they are your friends, too! They are your brethren if you are a child of God.
Conclusion
Remember, when you give, God can give you more. You have lost nothing! You have put it in another purse and God may hand it back to you in larger measure, yet. Men lose nothing by what they give to God’s saints. It would often be a heavenly investment if they bestowed it upon God’s family. But if they retain it, God has other means to make them poor, if they will not give to His cause. Let us rejoice! God will deliver us and bring us off safe at last, yes, “more than conquerors, through Him that loved us.”
May God give a blessing to you in remembering the poor!
Charles Spurgeon