The Poor
Text: John 12:8
Series: Restoration Sermons
Date:
Speaker: Ed Rangel
Location: Waupaca Church of Christ
Bible Version: NASB 1995
Sermon Type: Expository
Learning Objectives
By the close of this lesson the hearer should be able to:
- Define the use of "the poor" as a term applicable to multiple dimensions of human life, not only finances.
- Name the four categories of poverty identified — material, social, moral, spiritual — and give one example from each.
- Explain why poverty in material things is not a sin and why wealth does not commend a person to God.
- Identify the specific kind of poverty God blesses from Matthew 5:3 and Isaiah 66:2.
- Assess their own poverty honestly across all four categories and receive the blessing available to the poor in spirit.
Thesis
Poverty is broader than the absence of money. A person may be materially comfortable and still be desperately poor — in relationships, in character, in fellowship with God. The poor Jesus declares "blessed" (Matt. 5:3) are not the materially destitute; they are the poor in spirit — the ones who know their need before God and come to him with nothing to offer but that knowledge.
Burden
The outline opens with a definition that immediately broadens the sermon's scope: "The poor are the destitute. It is usually put in contrast with rich. It is a term that may be applied to all the things we possess. One may be poor in some things and rich in others." The burden is to press the hearer into an honest inventory across all four dimensions of poverty — material, social, moral, spiritual — and to end with the poverty God blesses: the poor in spirit who do not pretend to bring anything to God except need.
Introduction
"For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me" (John 12:8). Jesus said this in the house of Simon the leper, in response to the disciples' protest that the ointment Mary poured on his feet should have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor. The statement is not a dismissal of the poor; it is a grounding of Mary's extravagance in the uniqueness of the moment. But it is also a statement of fact: the poor are always present. They are present in every generation, in every society, in every congregation. The question the sermon addresses is not whether the poor exist but what kind of poverty threatens the hearer most deeply.
I. The Poor in Material Things
"We brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either" (I Tim. 6:7). Poverty in material things is the category that most immediately comes to mind: the person without sufficient food, clothing, or shelter. the reduces the list of actual necessities to three: food, clothing, and shelter. Everything beyond these is surplus — necessary surplus at times, but surplus. The person who lacks even these is materially poor.
Three important clarifications:
Poverty is not a sin. God does not condemn the person who is materially poor. The assumption that poverty is the result of moral failure — that the poor deserve their poverty — is contradicted throughout Scripture. Job was stripped of everything; David was a fugitive; the Lord himself had nowhere to lay his head (Matt. 8:20). Poverty is not a mark of divine disapproval.
Riches do not commend a person to God. The opposite assumption — that wealth is a sign of divine favor — is equally false. "How hard it will be for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God!" (Mark 10:23). Money has no standing in God's sight as a credential of righteousness. The person who has traded health for wealth has made the worse bargain. The coin that buys everything the market sells cannot purchase the one thing needed.
II. The Poor Socially
Social poverty is the poverty of isolation and alienation — the poverty of the person who has no genuine human connection. "If one has no friends, one is poor indeed." The material poor person may have friends; the socially poor person may have money. These are separate dimensions of the same word.
Three indicators of social poverty: no friends (the person whose money or circumstances have emptied the relational landscape around them); a disagreeable disposition (the person who repels connection by the way they treat the people around them); selfishness and cruelty (the person who has organized their life around their own advantage to the point of making genuine relationship impossible). Each of these is a form of poverty — the absence of what human community is designed to provide.
III. The Poor Morally
Moral poverty is the poverty of character — the impoverishment that results from low ideals, a guilty conscience, and lost self-respect.
"If one has low ideals, one is very poor." The person who aims at nothing in particular arrives there reliably. The reduction of moral expectation — the progressive lowering of the standard by which a person evaluates their own choices — is a form of self-impoverishment that no material success can compensate for.
A guilty conscience is poverty of a specific kind: the knowledge that something has been done that cannot be undone, and that it is still there, unpaid. Proverbs 28:1: "The wicked flee when no one is pursuing." The guilty conscience is the poverty of someone who cannot stop running.
Lost self-respect is the condition that follows repeated compromise. Each surrender of integrity costs something; the cumulative cost is the ability to look at oneself clearly. The person who has lost self-respect has lost the foundation on which every other recovery would have to be built.
IV. The Poor Spiritually
Spiritual poverty is the poverty that matters most, because it is the poverty of the dimension of the person that outlasts the others. Three expressions:
"If the soul has been neglected, one is poor." The soul is the dimension of the person that requires the kind of food, exercise, and attention that the body requires — except that its food is the word of God (I Pet. 2:2), its exercise is obedience, and its attention is prayer. The person who feeds the body and starves the soul is poor in the most fundamental sense.
"If worldliness has caused one to lose fellowship with Christ." Fellowship with Christ — the ongoing relationship sustained by obedience, prayer, and the word — is what it means to be spiritually alive. The person who has allowed the world's demands to crowd that relationship out has traded the one thing that sustains spiritual life for the things that satisfy only temporarily.
"If one is not rich toward God" (Luke 12:21). The rich fool of Luke 12 had filled his barns and was preparing to say "Soul, take your ease, eat, drink and be merry." God said: "This very night your soul is required of you." The inventory that mattered — what he had laid up toward God — was empty. The most materially successful person in the room may be the poorest person there if their account toward God is empty.
V. The Poor That God Blesses
Not all poverty is blessed. God does not bless poverty in itself — the absence of money is not a spiritual credential, and misery in material things is not a virtue. The poverty God blesses is specific.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:3). Poor in spirit: the person who knows they have nothing to bring to God — no merit, no sufficiency, no standing of their own. The opposite of pride. The person who approaches God as the prodigal approached his father: "I am no longer worthy to be called your son" (Luke 15:21). That person is in the right condition to receive what only God can give.
"But to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word" (Isa. 66:2). Contrite of spirit — the Hebrew word (dakkāʾ) means crushed, broken. The person who knows exactly what their sin is, what it cost, and what they have no power to repair. To that person God says: "I will look." This is the poverty that catches his attention.
Application
The inventory the sermon requires:
Material: Are you trusting in what you have accumulated? Are you trading the things that last for the things that don't? "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?" (Matt. 16:26).
Social: Are the relationships around you real? Have you invested in people in a way that has produced genuine community, or have you managed your social world so efficiently that no one has actually been let in?
Moral: What does your conscience tell you when you stop moving? What ideals have been quietly lowered over the years? What does it cost you to look at yourself honestly?
Spiritual: What has God been getting from your life? Is the fellowship with Christ active — the word, the prayer, the assembly, the service — or has it been displaced by other things that seemed more urgent?
The poverty that God blesses is not the poverty of despair; it is the poverty of honesty. The poor in spirit are not the people who feel bad about themselves; they are the people who know the truth about themselves and bring that truth to God.
Conclusion
"For you always have the poor with you" (John 12:8). The poor are always present — in every category the traces. The material poor are visible; the social, moral, and spiritual poor are less so. But the poverty that Christ came to address is the poverty of the spirit — the condition of the person who has run out of resources and knows it. The kingdom of heaven belongs to those people (Matt. 5:3). Not to those who have earned it; not to those who have achieved spiritual wealth by their own effort; but to those who know they are empty and come to the one who fills.
Invitation
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:3). This is the invitation. You do not have to be rich in anything to receive it. You do not have to have your material life in order, your social life healthy, your moral record clean, your spiritual account full. You have to know that you need what only God can give — and you have to come to him with that knowledge.
Believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God who came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). Repent of the worldliness that has filled the soul's space with what cannot satisfy it. Confess his name. Be baptized for the remission of your sins (Acts 2:38). And receive the kingdom — the one belonging to the poor in spirit.
Word Study
| English Term | Greek Term | Basic Meaning | Usage in This Sermon | Sermon Significance | Key Texts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Poor in spirit | ptōchoi tō pneumati | ptōchos = utterly destitute, reduced to begging | ptōchos = utterly destitute, reduced to begging | not merely the person who has less than average but the person who has nothing and knows it; "in spirit" locates the poverty: it is not material but spiritual — the person who comes before God with no pretension of sufficiency; this is the opposite of the self-sufficient pride that refuses to acknowledge need. | Matt. 5:3 |
| Contrite | dakkāʾ | crushed, pulverized | crushed, pulverized | the same root used in Psalm 51:17: "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise"; it is the condition of someone who has been brought to the end of self-defense and can only acknowledge what is true. | Isa. 66:2 |
| Rich toward God | eis theon ploutōn | accumulating toward God | accumulating toward God | the phrase describes investment in the direction of God rather than in the direction of the barns; what one stores up toward God is what persists after the barns are burned; the rich fool had everything stored in the wrong direction. | Luke 12:21 |
Scripture Interlock Table
| Theme | Boles' Outline | Supporting Scripture |
|---|---|---|
| "You always have the poor with you" — text | Text | John 12:8 |
| Brought nothing in, take nothing out — material poverty | I | I Tim. 6:7, 8 |
| Riches do not commend to God — wealth no credential | I | Mark 10:23 |
| Nowhere to lay his head — Jesus himself materially poor | I | Matt. 8:20 |
| Not rich toward God — worst poverty | IV | Luke 12:21 |
| Soul required tonight — the fool's inventory | IV | Luke 12:20 |
| "Blessed are the poor in spirit" — the poverty God blesses | V | Matt. 5:3 |
| "To the contrite of spirit I will look" | V | Isa. 66:2 |
| "Broken and contrite heart You will not despise" | V | Ps. 51:17 |
| "What will it profit a man" — material gain vs. soul | App. | Matt. 16:26 |
| Baptism for remission — entry into the kingdom | Invit. | Acts 2:38 |
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Converted from H. Leo Boles, Outline 121. Primary text: John 12:8 (stated by Boles). OCR corrections: "I£" → "If" (multiple); "Isa . 66: 2 ." → "Isa. 66:2." Doctrinal audit: poverty of material things is not a sin and is explicitly not God's condemnation (Boles's point preserved); riches as divine favor rejected; God-blessed poverty is specifically "poor in spirit" (Matt. 5:3) and "contrite of spirit" (Isa. 66:2) — not material poverty generically; invitation retains full obedient response (Acts 2:38).
