CS Lewis and Jonathan Edwards they’re two mentors of mine from AF far off uh this the thing I read by Jonathan Edwards Was A Treatise on the Christian’s duty to the poor and one of the marks of the church not just Urban churches but one of the marks of the church is care and involvement with the poor that’s how Jesus designed it now when I read this uh this Treatise some years ago I was really struck by something Jonathan Edwards was if most of you probably have only heard of him because in English class you had to read a piece out of his famous sermon sinners in the hands of an Angry God and therefore you know he’s not what you might call a a liberal humanist you know he’s not he’s not a modern secular person sinners in the hands of an Angry God now here’s a guy who Not only was what you could call to say the least traditional in his sentiments he was also an incred inedibly careful man in the way in which he wrote what he wrote what he said he agonized over every word and so I was very struck now you may not be struck when I read you this quote because you’re going to say sure preachers are always saying that you do it all the time Tim Keller every week you say this is the most important text in the Bible or something like that how can they all be the most important you’re you’re you know ministers are always doing exaggeration hyperbole you know hype but not not Jonathan Edwards never and he said in this thing and I’ve written it down where have we any command in the Bible laid down in stronger terms and in a more peremptory urgent manner than the command of giving to the poor now when I read that I did the same thing that you would do when you read it and that is I had to go to the dictionary because I don’t know what peremptory means do you and I went to the dictionary and it said beyond doubt or refusal incontrovertible and here is what Jonathan Edward said without any hyperbole there’s not a hyperbole bone in his body he said there is nothing clear in the Bible nothing more clear and more strong in the Bible than our duty for care and involvement with the poor and so he said when you become a Christian there is nothing more clear in God’s will for you now the reason that struck me is I said I don’t know that I know very few people that talk that way almost everybody says care for the poor is an option for Christians it is a department in the church it’s a committee and some people want to be on that committee but here’s Jonathan everage that comes along and says there is nothing more clear in the Bible there’s nothing mentioned more often there’s nothing mentioned more strongly there’s nothing mentioned more clearly there’s nothing more incapable of refusal there’s more nothing more incontrovertible than the church’s duty of care and involvement with the poor not just churches near poor areas not just certain kinds everybody now now when I realized that I began to read and I’m going to try to summarize a lot of what I’ve read here but one of the Edwards is basically saying this is one of the clearest things that every Christian should be doing but we’re going to screen it out we’re going to make it an option and that’s exactly what we do and here’s a perfect example of it The Sermon on the Mount uh Jesus famous sermon his famous uh sermon on the principles of the kingdom is clearly something that he preached very often when you have in the in the gospels uh Luke gives you a version of it Matthew gives you a version of it Matthew says it was a Sermon on the Mount Luke says it was a sermon on the plane it’s very clear that these are this is a summary both gospel writers give you a summary of it both gospel writers give you a pry of it it was done many times but Matthews is much much much more popular than Luke’s because Matthew says blessed is the poor in spirit oh yes the poor in spirit it’s metaphorical but you see you can’t get Beyond be you the reason Luke is not anywhere near as popular is because it’s scary because he doesn’t modify it see Matthew’s bringing out one side as we’re going to see but Luke’s bringing out the other side and here’s what he says blessed are the poor woe to the rich blessed are the empty woe to the fool there’s no way to spiritualize this away there’s no way to allegorize it away there’s no way to metaphorize it away the Bible tells us that the gospel if you get it does three things to you with regard to the poor everybody the gospel if you get it does three things and these three things hang together the gospel is an agent in US knowing the poor becoming the poor and loving the poor the gospel will be an agent in your knowing the poor understanding them being becoming the poor what’s that mean well I’ll get to it and loving the poor knowing becoming and loving and you got to do them all and or the goel does them all okay first of all first thing the Bible gives us first thing the gospel helps us do is know the poor understand the poor and uh you see when Jesus says blessed are the poor what he’s doing is he’s summarizing at least 200 at least 200 very direct in some cases very extensive places in the Old Testament where the poor discussed 200 at least he’s summarizing something and here’s the Bible tells tells us it’s it’s very very insightful and it essentially defines the poor it defines poverty it it describes it for us it helps understand the poverty and this is one of the hardest parts in the sermon was my looking at this and going back through the things and meditating on what I could and pulling out the concordance and basically from what I can tell the Bible tells you have to understand two things about poverty the condition of poverty or you won’t understand it the first thing the Bible tells us is it’s an economic Condition it’s a condition of being without the resour any little or no resources that the world values is to be without with little or with nothing that the world values if you’ve got money the world values that it’ll deal with you if you’ve Got Talent if you’ve got skills the world values that it’ll deal with you but if you have nothing the world throws you away if you are a young kid and you grow up in a community let’s say and by the time you get to maturity you get to 18 19 20 you cannot read or write because of the lack of nurture you got in in the various communities that you are part of and if by that time you’ve had such a broken family that uh you have to belong to a gang in order to have any sense of belonging or safety if because of that all those kinds of things you don’t know the most you don’t know the basic rudiments of building personal relationships or delayed gratification or anything like that you get to age 20 and you’ve got nothing the world wants you got nothing the world values you have no got you got no marketable skills you’ve got no connection you’ve got nothing and the world just throws you away in the Bible there are absolutely and definitely places where the Bible says that you may in life have things the world values and squander them through irresponsibility squander them through crime squander them through a lack of discipline you can squander them through irresponsible Behavior but and I listen I thought a great deal about this I I tell you over the years if you read if you read those 200 references in the Old Testament there certainly are references like that but 80 to 90% of the referen of the poor do not say that mainly if you want to understand poverty you have to see it as you had the goods you had things the world values and you lost them irresponsible Behavior listen the Bible does not condone irresponsible Behavior but by and large it sees the frequent irresponsible Behavior as a response to Poverty rather than as a cause of poverty that’s why for example you have in Proverbs 10:15 the wealth of the uh pardon me the wealth of the wealthy is their fortified City but the poverty of the poor is their destruction doesn’t say this is very unusual CU in the Bible almost always destruction your destruction is your sin destruction is your wickedness but no here the poverty the the the destruction of the poor is their poverty to be poor say the wealthy have are like a fortified City but the destruction of the poor their poverty to be poor is to be a city Without Walls now common sense and the Bible tells you that a fifth of the people in the world today who are in incredibly deep poverty they are not in De poverty as a result of their irresponsible Behavior their frequent irresponsible Behavior their frequent crime their frequent cynicism and hopeless behavior is a response to the poverty when you sit in the subway and you see the kids tons of kids that you can see are coming to maturity and when they get to maturity they will have nothing the world values they won’t have the skills they won’t be able to relate to people they won’t have the marketable skills they’ll have nothing and you look at them and you know that some of them are going to escape that if they’re unbelievably super ambitious and if they’re unbelievably lucky but most of them won’t did they ask for that my wife Kathy Keller is a middle class person why well you say because she worked at school and she worked a career right but to what degree to what degree is she middle class because her great-grandfather immigrated from Croatia 80 90 years ago and she’s got second and third cousins right now who are sitting in the rubble of Zagreb widowed poor to what degree is the reason my wife is middle class because she worked hard those people are working pretty hard they’re getting nowhere the Bible says that by and large the vast majority of the people who are in absolute misery are people who are born and they come up in the world and they find that they’ve got nothing the world values and so they’re thrown away Proverbs 19 interesting place where it says and 14 The Wealthy have many friends but the poor despised by even their own neighbors you see the complexity the Bible understands the complexity of these things you don’t have poor because you have no neighbors but because you have no neighbors you’re poor the reason poor people are poor is they have no neighbors the Bible says the neighbors go away they run away who are neighbors neighbors are people who come to school with you and put their kids in their school with you they’re the people who walk the streets but the neighbors the people with me they they flee they don’t want to be around the poor the poor have nothing of value but because the poor have nothing of value they even less of value because so the Bible says the poor are people without things that the world values and as a result that’s the first thing as a result the Bible says and in the Old Testament it says the people of God must respond to this aspect of poverty the poverty the economic condition the condition of being without the things the world values to grow up and realize I’ve got nothing and I’m being thrown away and the Bible says over and over again that we have to respond to that aspect of Mo of poverty with Mercy the Bible uses the word mercy over and over in the Old Testament Israel is told by God you’re going to be a Light of the Nations you’re going to be a light to the Nations because in your community you’re going to take care of the Widow you’re going to take care of the poor of the orphan there will be no poor among you if you do what I say the is the the the alleged legislation of the of Israel was fascinating for example no one this is an agrarian society remember no one was allowed to um to harvest their land out to the margins you had to leave the margins for the poor it was God’s Social Security in Israel so that they could glean every third year an additional tithe to everything else that you gave and a tithe of the produce of your land every third year an additional tithe was taken and given to the poor every seventh year you had the Sabbath year on the Sabbath year you could not Harvest your own Orchards you could not Harvest your own Vineyards but the entire Harvest of The Vineyards and of the orchard was to be left for the poor and over and over again you have you have remarkable statements like this one the famous One in um Deuteronomy 15 God says if there be any poor man among your brothers and any of the towns of the Lord your God is giving you do not be hard-fisted or tight-fisted toward the poor rather be open-handed give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart be open-handed toward the poor and needy in your land give till his need is gone the economic aspect nothing of value therefore Mercy but that’s not it now this might sound redundant but it’s not the second thing the Bible tells us about the condition of being poor is on the one hand the poor have little or nothing of value but on the other hand the what the poor do have is taken from them now this is you say well what okay see it’s not just an economic Condition it’s a social condition and the Bible makes a pretty big deal about it it’s called exploitation in the Bible there’s really two major Hebrew words that are translated poor in the Old Testament and the one major Hebrew word is best translated needy but the other major word is translated oppressed and what the Bible says is the poor what it means to be poor is to be a city Without Walls what it means to be poor is you do have things you have something but what you have is taken away from you and that’s the reason why we read a place like uh uh pardon me like Proverbs 13:23 where it says a poor man’s field May produce abundant food but Injustice sweeps it away a poor man’s field may have abundant food but in Justice sweeps it away I I this is deep this is complex what what the poor do have is taken away because they’re poor because they’re powerless because they can’t control their world we take from them the world takes from them without giving anything in return now you know this word oppression unfortunately was hijacked by Karl Marx and so a lot of us are afraid of it but the Bible had it a long time before KL Marx did and what he’s saying is the way you can tell a person is poor is that they can be taken from what you could take from and without giving anything back now we see some obvious examples of of exploitation and oppression in almost every country you’ve got groups of people that are being or have been at one point kept down by the more powerful groups not allowed to own businesses not allowed to hold office not allowed to vote kept down taken from but not given but you know it’s more complex than that there’s a guy named Robert Lytham some years ago Robert lyam was a was an urban pastor and wrote a book um on on understanding the city through the gospel and he tells a story that’s it’s awfully awfully fascinating and poignant in 1957 this happened when he was just a kid basically or he was like 21 22 and he was uh uh he was a student Pastor in a very Urban neighborhood and he doesn’t say what city it was and I can I’ll tell you you’ll see why he doesn’t say where it happened but he tells about the fact that he was working in housing projects in an urban area in 1957 and and in that place he met a girl named Eva and he said she was 14 years old Eva was beautiful exceptionally attractive but her life was a wreck her family was broken she had crimes and Drugs in her family she felt she had no future she had poor education very poor job skills cynical but she became radiant when she came to know Christ hope began to Dawn and she went to a Bible study that I led just before I left for the summer she came to me and said Bob I’m under terrible pressure large a large gang in the project recruits girls to be prostitutes for wealthy white men in the suburbs they make money the girls are like their slaves and they’re trying to force me to join them now the Bob Lyin being a young minister at the time Minister candidate said he didn’t really get it he says well you just resist the Bible says you resist evil it will flee from you why would you do that you wouldn’t do that and so he says um he says now make sure you resist evil and and you call somebody for help and don’t worry and he was just about to go away for the summer and when he came back in September at the end of his vacation he went he looked came to the Bible study Eva wasn’t there and they said oh she stopped coming about 2 weeks after you went away for the summer so finally she went and she he found her tracked her down she wouldn’t look at them and she said I gave in I’m working for them how could you give in to them like that I said unsympathetically well first she said they beat my father they said they beat him and they did then they said it’ be my brother and he ended up in hospital then they said they’d gang rape my mother so I joined how could you I said why didn’t you go to the police she turned and said Bob who do you think they are and at that point he suddenly began to realize that that part of the police department was running a prostitution ring now here’s the difference and here’s what he understood here’s what I’m trying to show you there’s a lot of people in this room that’s got something a lot of you are attractive a lot of you are physically beautiful like Eva was but because you’re not poor nobody can come and take it from you but because she was poor they could they could just come and they could take it and they didn’t have to give anything back and you see it’s more subtle than even that if a woman owns a store in a very nice Community let’s say you own a store in a nice Community you live in the community where you own the store well you’re taking money from that Community people are coming in and and you’re taking money you’re making profit off of them but you’re living in the community which means you’re plowing back everything that you took you’re living in the community which means you’re sending your child to the school and keeping the schools good with the clout you have and you’re you’re spending money in other people’s stores and you’re putting money in in their Bank in that community and that bank is investing in other businesses and so forth but listen what happens if you own a a store in a poor neighborhood what happens if you work and you’re poor in a poor neighborhood what happens if you’re making money off the poor but you’re not going to live there in fact everybody who makes money off the poor doesn’t live there and as a result you’re taking the money out and you’re putting all the money off of them somewhere else your kids are in other schools your money’s in other Banks you’re spending money in other institutions and as a result you’re taking out and taking out and taking out nothing goes in it goes down and down and down and no neighbors want to live there so the poor run after their neighbors and the Neighbors run away and you say well wait a minute I just want to live in a safe place don’t you see see how it isn’t just an individual thing is there something wrong somebody says with me wanting to live in a safe neighborhood no did you think I was going to say yes I’m trying to show you that it’s not just a matter of individual sin the world is broken the world is structured this way people come into the world without much that the world values and that makes them poor and what they do have can be see there is produce in the field of the poor but Injustice sweeps it away there was Beauty in the field of evil but Injustice sweeps it away things are broken and the Bible says therefore because poverty is an economic condition we respond to it as Believers with Mercy but then secondly because it’s a social condition we must respond to it with Justice because there’s Injustice because there’s exploitation and that’s the reason why we have this great place in uh in Deuteronomy again Deuteronomy chapter 10 where God where God says for the Lord your God is the god of gods and the Lord of lords the great God Mighty and awesome who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes he defends the cause of the fatherless and the Widow and loves the alien giving him food and clothing and what you have is All Through the Bible look do not pervert Justice do not show favoritism to the great judge your neighbor fairly do not deprive the alien and fatherless of Justice seek Justice encourage the oppressed defend the cause of the fatherless plead Thea cause of the Widow let Justice roll down like a river and righteousness like a never- ending stream and the prophets were so sure that the reason for this enormous poverty that is always there my guess is if a fifth of the population of the world today is in deep poverty it’s got to have been if anything worse in the past certainly couldn’t have been much better if this has always been a condition of the broken of the human race the prophets were smart enough to realize it’s not just going to be if the nasty oppressed people start to get smart we’re all involved in oppression it it’s just like you said the people don’t want to live there if I work there sure I’m making money off of them why should I have to live there it’s not we’re all involved and it’s something much deeper than any than any social program is going to deal with it’s much deeper than just virtuous living is going to deal with and as a result the prophet said someday the Messiah is going to come and over and over and over the prophet said when Messiah gets here Justice for the poor poor when Messiah gets here Mercy for the poor again and again and again when the anointed Prince gets here Justice for the poor Mercy for the poor it comes over and over and over again and that’s the reason why you have in Isaiah 11 it says when the righteous Branch he will judge the needy he will give them Justice you go to Psalm 72 it says when the king gets here when he comes back Justice for the poor over and over and over again and when Jesus Christ on the very first day of his ministry in Luke chapter 4 he goes to the synagogue to announce his ministry and he gets up and he reads from the Isaiah scroll Isaiah 61 one of the great Prophecies of the Messiah and he reads it where the Messiah speaks and it says the spirit of the Lord is upon me to to do what Isaiah 61 all I got to do is find it the spirit of the Lord is upon oh pardon me here’s yeah I knew it the spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor to bind up the Brokenhearted to Proclaim freedom for the captives to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and he sat down and then with one sentence with the shortest sermon in recorded history and perhaps the most powerful he read that and he sat down and he said today this prophecy is fulfilled in your hearing he says I’m here to do it now yeah I know we have to move on but let me just let me just suggest something to you at this point you cannot allegorize this if the Old Testament again and again and again talks about the fact that poverty real poverty economic poverty sociological poverty is one of the main results of the Brokenness of the world one of the main results of the Injustice and the UN mercifulness and the pride and the evil and the sinfulness and the wickedness of the world and if over and over and over again the Messiah is said when I get here I’m going to preach good news to the poor and when Jesus shows up on the very first day he says I’m here I’m the one I’m the one that Isaiah 11 and Isaiah 61 and Isaiah 42 and uh Psalm Psalm uh 147 and Psalm 71 over and over and over again I’m the one listen the kingdom of God does mean more than this when you say I’m going to be obedient to the king it must mean more than this it does when you say I am part of the kingdom of God it does mean more than this but it cannot mean less than this Jesus Christ was absolutely passionate for the poor it was a consuming passion of his life and anybody who says they’re a follower of Jesus Christ must be just as concerned just as concerned there it has to it has to be just as Central to our church it has to be just as Central to your life it has to be just as Central I think as witnessing as Fellowship as worship as everything else it’s one of the things it’s a nonnegotiable it has to be you just you just make you just make a joke of the Old Testament and you make a joke of the New Testament and not only that somebody says now I’ve heard this from people who say yeah but in the Old Testament over and over and over again it says when you’re poor brother or sister it says it’s it’s talking about in Israel it’s talking about the Covenant Community these are Believers taking care of Believers okay okay that’s not all it talks about but let me just let me just suggest to you in if you’re in New York or if you’re in the inner if you’re in the cities of North America go to those poor areas go and look at the people trapped there I want you to know Christian friends do you know how many of those people are your brothers and sisters do you know how many of them believe in Jesus Christ do you know how many of them do just gobs and gobs of them and it says in Deuteronomy 15 open your hand until there need is gone you know it actually says that a brother or a sister open your hand until their need is gone don’t just give my hand out give them a hand give them an Embrace get them on their feet I mean there’s how can you get around it but that’s not all God does the Messiah does not just come with what I gave you you say but isn’t this most of the sermon yeah yeah it’s true but all I’ve given you so far guess what all I’ve given you is guilt in fact because the sermon is not over you’ve had you’ve got Guild when the sermon is over you shouldn’t have any at all because if the Messiah came just saying I have come to make the 80% of you the 75% of you with means feel guilty and start to share with the 25% that don’t have it wouldn’t have worked it wouldn’t possibly work but he does not come the gospel does not just show us help us know the poor the gospel makes us become the poor now what do you mean by that well if you look carefully it says looking look at verse 20 it says looking at his disciples he said blessed are you and even though it’s translated who are poor you the poor now somebody has pointed out a number of people have pointed out and they’ve been you know kind of people have been perplexed by this and they’ve looked at this and theyve said but they’re not all four in fact if you go just a few verses higher if you go just a little bit further up in John uh in Luke chapter 6 you’ll see that Jesus has just called his disciples together you know and he’s just gotten Peter Andrew James John and one of them is Matthew and we know Matthew wasn’t poor he was quite well off he was a tax collector and we know probably a number of the others weren’t poor and maybe not even the fisherman not maybe not even Peter Andrew James and John were poor so what is he talking about here’s what he’s talking about and here is the other side now hear this when John the Baptist said sent his Messengers said to Jesus Christ who are you are you really the Messiah how do we know and Jesus says go back and tell John I preach the good news to the poor and on the very first day of his ministry in Luke 4 when he reachs in the Isaiah scroll and he says I’ve come to Proclaim good news to the poor you might say well that’s just metaphorical no no no no no listen it means a lot more than that it is very clear that it doesn’t mean that Jesus Christ only saves people who are poor obviously he saves middle class and wealthy people and all here but what it does it mean it must mean something and it does mean something blessed are the poor in spirit means this I preach good news to the poor means this it means that when the gospel comes to you will come to you only if you get rid of your middle class spirit and you become poor in spirit you cannot be a Christian unless you’re poor in spirit you cannot be a Christian if you’re middle class in spirit what do I mean by that I’ll tell you what it is religion is middle class religion appeals to the able religion appeals to people that say I can do it if I work hard enough but the gospel only comes into the lives of people who are poor in spirit who say I have absolutely nothing of value and I have no power and no choices and I need to rely completely on the salvation of Jesus Christ the sheer Grace of Jesus Christ if you are middle class in spirit you cannot be saved you’ll enjoy religion you’ll love religion the gospel is not religion you must be poor in spirit the gospel makes you poor in spirit the gospel only comes to the poor in spirit because Jesus says that I will only preach the gospel only can preach the gospel the only people who hear the gospel are the poor you know you say what are you talking about well I just you know the the the same two characteristics of material poverty are the same two characteristics of spiritual poverty without which you cannot see the kingdom of God remember what those two characteristics were I’m just turning them around on you first of all religion says try hard live nobly be good be tolerant give money to the poor religion says that oh yes it does up to now all you’ve had is religion in this sermon give money to the poor be good be nice and the religious person says I can do it I can summ summons up all of my strength I can do it I I’m going to do it I’m going to turn over New Leaf I’m going to start living like this that’s what religion says but the gospel comes and says this the gospel says no one is good know not one there is nothing in your heart that’s good even your good deeds have been done to feel Superior to other people and to try to get God’s get control over God get leverage over God get you to owe him even your best Deeds are as a filthy rag they’re a stench you’re filled with self-righteousness and you’re no better than the person who’s lived an immoral life and therefore you’re utterly lost there’s no love of God in your heart but there’s only one hope there’s only one possibility Jesus Christ the rich one became poor Jesus Christ the King became a poor man who was born in a manger and his parents when they went to do the dedication ceremony for circumcision they gave they were poor people they only gave the two two young pigeons they gave the lowest the the smallest economic offering for the poor and here’s a man who all his life what is he doing he was a man who he he says Foxes have holes and birds have nests but the son of man doesn’t have a place to lay down his head here’s the man who’s rejected here’s the man who’s cast off here’s the man who’s always weeping here’s a man who’s always empty here’s a man who comes into on Palm Sunday on a borrowed Steed has his last supper in a borrowed room is buried in a borrowed grave and dies naked naked with the last shred taken away from him they cast lots for it and only because he did that do you have any hope do you believe that do you believe you had no merits do you believe that go you God could absolutely judge you today that when you go to God you must come with nothing you must come and say nothing in my hands I bring simply to the cross I cling you must not come saying I’ve lived a pretty good life you owe me you have to say nothing you have every right to send me to hell but I want your mercy because of what Jesus Christ the poor man did the suffering servant you know what suffering servant means what’s a servant mean a suff a servant is a poor person a servant is a person without power a servant is a person who’s both economically and sociologically poor Jesus Christ came as poor and that’s the only hope you have now does that offend you is there anybody here who says the idea that I go to God and say no matter how what I’ve done I deserve to go to hell I have nothing no merits at all save me for sheer grace of God if you’re offended you’re middle class and spirit and you cannot be saved and let me suggest something to you if the gospel works on your heart you become poor because the poor understand this oh yes the poor understand this because the gospel is only for the spiritually poor and it’s especially for the actually poor because the poor understand it’s not too long ago I somebody gave me a sermon tape and I listened to it I I hope this doesn’t sound disrespectful but I it’s just a great way to make the point it was it was somebody preaching a sermon in the city big liberal church and the uh Pastor read some accounts on how uh it sounded like what he was saying conservative churches are growing and he by this is how he defined conservative I wouldn’t but he says he defined conservative churches where people still you know believe that you’re lost unless you believe in Christ and you have to be born again churches where uh you believe that uh Jesus Christ had to die on the cross and you have to have blood sprinkled on you and you have to believe in miracles and Supernatural and he says he says those churches are filled today that’s what the papers say lots of people come they fill Hunter Auditorium but we’re different people aren’t here you know why he said because we aren’t popular because we go to the margins and we minister to the poor the poor on the margins of society we don’t minister to the yepy we minister to the poor but all I wanted to say and I’m thinking about finding him and I’ve never heard of him but I’m going to try to call him up and I’m going to say but when you go out to the margins when you minister to the poor guess what kind of religion they’ve got and guess what the only kind of religion they have the poor Love The Gospel because the poor see the PO the poor person in Zagreb knows that the only reason you you know all of you in this room have got poor relatives someplace who are poor because their ancestors didn’t have the smarts or didn’t have the wherewithal see in generally to come here and you know Kathy’s got fourth or fifth cousins who are sitting in zreb and if they knew what they would know if they knew about her what they would say is the fact that she is where she is and I’m where I am she is where she is by the grace by Grace it’s a gift they’ve gotten rid of their middle class silliness that it’s you know you can be anything you want to be they understand better and therefore the poor will never ever ever ever embrace the kind of religion that middle class people like middle class people like ethical religion we don’t want to get into oh Doctrine we don’t want to get into this idea of about Jesus dying blood New Birth oh we just believe in being good and being nice the poor will never buy that kind of religion because that’s religion it’s not a gospel they’ll never buy it they know too much they want something that will change lives and it does change their life because when they go to the to the Lord and they realize that spiritually they have nothing of value they receive a value they’ve never known before just like you will if you come to him like that and when they come acknowledging their lack of power and that’s the other thing that a Christian has to do to become poor you’ve got to be willing to say I give up all my choices I give up all my rights of self-determination I follow you completely a couple years ago a woman said to me why is it that most churches don’t teach that salvation is by grace alone why do they teach that it’s by being a good person I asked her why do you think remember what she said I’ve used this before she says if salvation’s completely by Grace then God could ask anything of you but if it’s by works then he owes you and that’s right and the point is to become spiritually poor is not only to say I have nothing of value but it’s also to say I owe you everything command me unconditional obedience unconditional surrender and when the poor do that they find for the first time that they’ve got confidence before everybody else because they’ve surrendered to God that they’ve got value before everybody else because they’ve given themselves to God the gospel is only for the spiritually poor and especially for the material materially poor and now lastly and I’ve got to stop the third point is this don’t you see what the messiah’s done now don’t you see why he didn’t just bring a program what has the Messiah done why was he able to come and say oh I love this why was he able to come not and say I have come and I will fulfill it he s sat down and it said the Messiah will come the spirit of the Lord has anointed me to come and Proclaim good news to the captives and and and released to the Blind and he sits down he says it has been fulfilled has been why is it that when Hannah says the Lord will raise up the needy from the ash sheep but when Mary sings The Magnificat when she knows that she’s going to give birth to the Son of God the Messiah who’s going to she saids says he has lifted up the needy from the asep past tense it’s over the Messiah has not come with a program the Messiah has come and he’s changed the hearts of the poor because as the gospel goes to the port it lifts them up we’ve got studies and studies there it’s it lifts them up it gives them hope it shows them gives them dignity and it takes you and me and if you’re willing to get rid of your middle class Spirit but not your middle class Goods if you’re able to get rid of your middle class Spirit you look at the poor and you realize I am exactly the same as they are you love them and not only that you don’t pity them you don’t pity the poor well it doesn’t mean you don’t feel sympathy that’s not what I mean but I mean you don’t condescendingly look down and say oh these poor people you say they’re exactly like me there is absolutely no no difference between me and them none at all when I look at a poor person I see my own story I see exactly how I look apart from Jesus Christ my righteousness is is a filthy rag if they’re in a filthy rag I just see myself and what that means is it utterly changes our attitude toward them it means we partner with them non- paternalistically it mean it means we’re willing to live with them and be part of them it means also that we’re willing now to give generously John stot has a great little book on this a great little article on this where he says what are we supposed to do with their goods what does the Bible say does the Bible say we must become poor materially and he checks it all out and decides no it doesn’t really tell you have to do that then on the other hand does it say we can stay rich and just give away to charity no we can’t do that he says we don’t have to become poor nor can we stay Rich we have got to get he says incredibly contented with what we’ve got because we have rewards in heaven that’s why we’re not afraid to weep that’s the reason why we’re not afraid to mourn that’s the reason we’re not afraid to weep now that’s the reason we’re not afraid to be empty now we have to be extremely content with what we have and radically generous we don’t have to actually become poor but we’re not allowed to stay rich and we will Messiah has changed there’s a power in the world to change our hearts and to change the Poor’s hearts and to the degree that the kingdom of God spreads this goes far deeper than any any program there’s good news for the poor and good news only for the poor the poor meet Jesus those who know they’re no different than the poor meet Jesus and those who love the poor prove that they have met Jesus amen let’s pray we pray father that we might become a church that is no longer got a poor committee but we pray that in every heart we would set up a poor committee and we would realize that part of my life part of my care part of my joy part of the new Consciousness I have must now go into proclaiming good news to the poor I thank you Lord that through the gospel we can know the poor secondly we can become poor in spirit and that thirdly leads for us to love the poor to honor the poor to respect the poor we pray Lord that you might teach us how to live lives of mercy and Justice and then the world would know and only then will the world know that the King has come it’s in Jesus name we pray amen for more of this series and other resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church please visit www.gospelkitaa.co.tz