'There is that maketh himself poor and yet'--or, as varied, the
expression is, 'therefore hath great riches.' Jesus Christ has lifted
the thoughts in my text into the very region into which I am trying to
bring them, when in the first of all the Beatitudes, as they are
called, 'He opened His mouth and said, Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.' Poor, and therefore an owner of
a kingdom! Now I need not, at this stage of my sermon, insist upon the
fact that that consciousness of poverty is the only fitting attitude
for any of us to take up in view of the two facts with which I
started, the fact of our dependence and the fact of our sinfulness.
What absurdity it seems for a man about whom these two things are
true, that, as I said, he began with a borrowed capital, and has only
incurred greater debts in his transactions, there should be any
foothold left in his own estimation on which he can stand and claim to
be anything but the pauper that he is. Oh! brethren, of all the
hallucinations that we put upon ourselves in trying to believe that
things are as we wish, there is none more subtle, more obstinate, more
deeply dangerous than this, that a man full of evil should be so
ignorant of his evil as to say, like that Pharisee in our Lord's
parable, 'I thank Thee that I am not as other men are. I give tithes
... I pray ... I am this, that, and the other thing; not like that
wretched publican over there.' Yes, this is the fit attitude for
us,--'He would not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven.'
Then let me remind you that this wholesome recognition of facts about
ourselves as they are is the sure way to possess the wealth. Of
course, it is possible for a man by some mighty influence or other
brought to bear upon him, to see himself as God sees him, and then, if
there is nothing more than that, he is tortured with 'the sorrow that
worketh death.' Judas 'went out and hanged himself'; Peter 'went out
and wept bitterly.' The one was sent 'to his own place,' wherever that
was; the other was sent foremost of the Twelve. If you see your
poverty, let self-distrust be the nadir, the lowest point, and let
faith be the complementary high point, the zenith. The rebound from
self-distrust to trust in Christ is that which makes the consciousness
of poverty the condition of receiving wealth.
And what wealth it is!--the wealth of a peaceful conscience, of a
quiet heart, of lofty aims, of a pure mind, of strength according to
our need, of an immortal hope, of a treasure in the heavens that
faileth not, 'where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt; where thieves
do not break through nor steal.' Blessed be God! the more we have the
riches of glory in Christ Jesus, the more shall we feel that we have
nothing, and that all is His, and none of it ours. And so, as the
rivers run in the valleys, and the high mountain-tops are dry and
barren, the grace which makes us rich will run in the low ground of
our conscious humiliation and nothingness.
Dear brother! do you estimate yourself as you are? Have you taken
stock of yourself? Have you got away from the hallucination of
possessing wealth? Has your sense of need led you to cease from trust
in yourself, and to put all your trust in Jesus Christ? Have you taken
the wealth which He freely gives to all who sue _in forma
pauperis_? He does not ask you to bring anything but debts and
sins, emptiness and weakness, and penitent faith. He will strengthen
the weakness, fill the emptiness, forgive the sins, cancel the debts,
and make you 'rich toward God.' I beseech you to listen to Him,
speaking from heaven, and taking up the strain of this text: 'Because
thou sayest I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of
nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and
poor, and blind, and naked, I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in
the fire, that thou mayest be rich.' And then you will be of those
blessed poor ones who are 'rich through faith, and heirs of the
Kingdom.'