HOPE
HOPE FOR THE POOR
DR. JIM DIXON
MATTHEW 25:31
OCTOBER 19, 2008
I think most of you would agree that it’s kind of a scary moment when you drive your car over the top of a hill, or perhaps around the bend in the road, and you see a cop car parked right ahead of you and a police officer with a radar gun directed right at you. Your heart kind of skips a beat. I think the first thing you do is you look at your speedometer—are you under the speed limit, over the speed limit, at the speed limit, and what is the speed limit? Of course, you just hope you’re not in trouble. We live in a nation of laws. Laws need to be enforced. And radar is very useful in law enforcement. Radar is very useful in aviation, very useful in naval navigation, military defense, air defense, and base surveillance. Radar is desperately needed technology in this world. Perhaps some of you have wondered where the word radar came from, what is its root word, what is its etymology. And the truth is radar has no etymology, not in the normal sense. You see, radar is an acronym. Radar is an acronym and radar stands for Radio Detecting and Ranging. Today we deal with another acronym.
We deal with the word hope, and the word hope is not normally an acronym, but we have converted this word into an acronym so that each letter in HOPE represents a concept. The “H” represents helping the poor. So, when you think of HOPE and you think of the “H,” think of helping the poor.
Now, today we are going to have two teachings. The second teaching will have to do with God’s call to the church, the call of Christ that is upon the church with regard to the poor. But the first teaching has to do with the biblical view of poverty. The first teaching has to do with a theology of poverty, understanding how God views the poor. In the Bible there are really four different types of poverty, four different types of poor people.
First of all, there are poor because of their own sin. The Bible makes this clear. Some people are poor because of their own sin. It may have to do with sins of drugs and alcohol and violence. It may have to do with tragic lifestyle, or it may have simply to do with sloth. The early church and the early church fathers identified seven deadly sins. These seven deadly sins still remain very important in Roman Catholic theology, and the seven deadly sins were deadly not in the sense that they were sins which lead to hell, but deadly in the sense in the root sins, sins which lead to other sins. St. Gregory the Great wrote extensively on these seven deadly sins, and one of them the sin of sloth. Sloth can produce poverty.
So, when you look in the wisdom literature of the Bible, you see this association sometimes between sloth and poverty. When you look in the book of Proverbs, you see this association between sloth and poverty. In Proverbs 6:6-11 we have these words: “Go to the ant, oh sluggard, consider her ways and be wise. For she has neither chief nor officer nor ruler, but she provides food in the summer and gathers sustenance in harvest. And how long will you lie there, oh sluggard? When will you rise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands in rest, and poverty will come upon you like a vagabond. And economic want will come upon you like a robber, like an armed man.”
You find passages in the Bible like this where poverty is viewed as the result of sloth. And you go through the book of Proverbs and throughout the wisdom literature in the Bible and you oftentimes see the statement that sloth leads to poverty. Laziness leads to poverty, but industriousness and hard work lead to wealth. You find that formula, that statement, oftentimes in the wisdom literature of the Bible. Remember, when you go through the Proverbs, the Proverbs does not consist of promises. It consists of principles. God is not saying if you work hard you will be wealthy. He’s not saying even that if you are lazy, you’ll not necessarily be poor. He’s just laying out that principle. This is wisdom literature. And so, as you go through the Proverbs you have these principles.
Now, I hope you understand that most people in the world who are poor are not poor because of their own sin. Most people in the world who are poor are not poor because of their own sloth. Even sloth, however, deserves some compassion. I mean, there are people born into generational sloth, and they’ve had nothing modeled for them in the way of industriousness. And so, we should always be people of compassion and have great compassion on people are poor regardless of the cause.
Now, the Bible says some people are poor because of the sin of others. This is the second category with regard to the poor. Some are poor because of the sin of others. The Bible says this again and again and again. In fact, this is a huge group in the mind of God, all those who are poor because of the sin of others. So, you go to the Book of James, and you see the statement of the apostle of our Lord Jesus Christ and the brother of our Lord. James writes in James 2:1, “Hold no partiality as you hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory. For if a rich man, with gold rings and fine clothing, comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in and you say to the rich man, ‘Have a seat here please,’ while you say to the poor man, ‘stand over there, or sit at my feet,’ have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen to me, my brethren, my beloved brethren. Has not God chosen the poor of the world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court. Is it not they who blaspheme the honorable that was invoked over you?” James goes on to say, “Weep and howl, oh rich, for the judgment is coming upon you, the judgment of God.” There are passages in the Bible like that where the rich are viewed as the oppressors of the poor, and many are viewed as poor because of the sins of the rich.
As you go through the prophets you look in the Bible (not at the wisdom literature but at the prophetic section of the Old Testament through the major and minor prophets) you see time and again the prophets of Israel railing at the rich of Israel because they are oppressing the poor. They are living in opulence. They are living in wealth, living in splendor, and often times because they have used and abused the poor. And also, the prophets railed because the rich did not care about the poor, did not seek to lift them out of their poverty. And so, you have this teaching in Scripture that there are people who are poor because of the sins of others.
Certainly, this is still true today. You can go throughout the emerging world, sometimes called the Two-Thirds World, where there is so much poverty, and you can see nations with great economic polarity. You have some people extremely rich and many of them are in government. They are at the top. And you have other people who are in abject poverty. And many times, these governments are corrupt, so much so that even relief agencies here in the western world, and relief agencies here in the United States, when we send money to help, the money doesn’t even get to the poor people, doesn’t even get to the problem: It’s taken by the rich. It’s taken by the government to fatten their own profits. These are corrupt governments, oppressors of the people.
Now, here in the United States we have something called corporate greed. I’m not against corporations. I recognize the fact that corporate America provides millions of jobs. I understand that. But there is a problem in America with corporate greed. Some of the problems we’re experiencing today have to do with corporate greed. And corporate greed ultimately affects people, destroys lives, and increases poverty. So, you have this second category of people who are poor because of the sins of others, and the Bible makes that clear.
And then there is this third category of people who are poor simply out of happenstance. They are just born the wrong place, perhaps at the wrong time. Born in Appalachia. Born in the inner city. Born in the emerging world. Born in the Two-Thirds World. There are places in Africa and South America and Asia where the poverty is so deep. Maybe there are those that have committed sins against these people, but often times it just seems like they are poor by happenstance, by no fault of their own or by the actions of others.
And, of course, in the Bible there’s this fourth group identified as the poor, and these are those who are not poor materially, necessarily, but those who are poor spiritually. Poor in spirit. Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” My hope and prayer is that every one of us in this room today are poor in spirit because those who are poor in spirit are desperate for God: desperate to see him, desperate to know him, desperate to experience his love and desperate to experience his provision. Poor in spirit.
In the Greek language there are a number of words for poor. There’s the word “penes,” and it refers to a day laborer. A day laborer is poor. A day laborer only had money for the day, no saved money. They worked each day for the provisions of the day and the needs of the day, and if they lost their job they could die. They were just day laborers—penes.
Another Greek word in the Bible for poor is “ptochos.” Ptochos means abject poverty, beggars in the road. They don’t even have jobs—utterly poor, destitute, ptochos. When Jesus gives the beatitudes, and he starts with that first beatitude in the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” he uses the word ptochos—except, of course, he didn’t really use the word ptochos, because the Bible’s written in Greek and Jesus spoke Aramaic. So, the word ptochos is used to translate the Aramaic word that Jesus used, and the word he used was probably “ani”—in Hebrew and Aramaic “ani” means the same as ptochos. It means the destitute, the impoverished and those who are begging. People in the streets. “Ani.”
But this word “ani” came through an evolution, and over a period of time it came to refer to people who were desperate for God, people who were not necessarily poor physically, but desperate for God and his love—people desperate to know him, desperate to see him, and desperate for his provision. And so, this is that fourth category.
The Bible indicates that many who are poor in spirit are also poor physically. The Bible makes this very clear. Often times those who are relatively affluent don’t have a felt need for God. Often times people who are relatively rich just don’t have a hunger and thirst for God. And often times it’s the truly poor in the world who have a great hunger for God. So, you have this concept of “ani.”
So, we’ve looked at a biblical theology of poverty. We’ve looked at these four categories of poverty. What I’d like us to do now is take a look at the call of Jesus upon his people: The call of Jesus upon us, upon the church. First of all, we are called to compassion. Christ has called us to be people of compassion. As a follower of Jesus, no one should be able to accuse you of lacking compassion. We are called to be people of compassion.
In the Bible in the New Testament there are a number of words for compassion. They vary in their force and intensity. At the lowest level, at the minimal level, there is this word “sumpathos,” a Greek word in the New Testament from which we get the word sympathy. Sumpathos literally means “to pathos,” “to suffer”—to suffer with somebody, to feel what somebody else feels. This is the lowest level of compassion, but very important. I think we all in this room have the capacity to feel what someone else is feeling. All of you have had tears in your eyes because you heard someone tell a hard story. You felt somebody else’s pain and it gave you tears. You’ve experienced that even in a movie. We all have the capacity for sumpathos, to feel what somebody else feels. And this is where it begins with regard to the call of church, with regard to the poor. Got to have compassion. Got to have some tears.
I want to show you a little film clip that our elder board saw this last Tuesday. We’ve edited it to make it a little shorter. Tim Haskell, one of our elders here at Cherry Hills Community Church, who is also the chairman of the board over at Valor across the street, loves Christ and just came back with one of our church short-term mission groups. They just went to Uganda, and they ministered to the poorest of the poor. They went with a representative from World Vision. Tim passed around some pictures and we just saw villages with thousands of huts and tents as far as the eye could see. And we saw impoverished people, people living in great poverty. You know how recently, in our AIDS exhibit, we gave you the opportunity to adopt an orphan whose parents have died of AIDS. And you adopted more than a thousand orphans in Africa. I know God is pleased, and I’m so pleased. A thousand orphans adopted by you. And 600 of them are from these villages you are going to see in Uganda. I just want to set the stage that way, and have you take a look at this and maybe feel some compassion.
These are precious people—many of them trying to hide their poverty by beautiful colored clothes. But understand that, in this mass sea of humanity, with tens of thousands upon tens of thousands, 40% of them will never reach the age of 21. Forty percent will never reach age 21. Many of them die in birth, but many die of water born contagions, water borne diseases like malaria. And again, so many of them die of AIDS because AIDS is epidemic in their region of the world. Many of them have lost their mom and dad because their mom and dad died of AIDS, and now they are orphaned. I don’t know when you look at that what you feel, but surely some sympathy, surely some compassion, sumpathos, maybe a little moisture in the eye.
God wants us to go deeper, and so, God has given us deeper words for compassion in the Bible. We have this word “splanchnos,” which is another word for compassion in the Bible. It means “to be moved inwardly.” Splanchnos means to be moved within and it means to be moved to action. So, you see something and it moves you and it moves you to action. I thank God for all of you who have gone on short-term mission trips and have been moved to action. Kathy Burr is on our staff, but in addition to Kathy and Tim you saw many members of our church just loving Christ, loving people, and acting on their compassion. Over the period of years, we’ve had perhaps over 3,000 of you who have gone on short-term mission trips to the emerging world. Thank God, and we need more. We need more. And it’s not just that we reach out to bless them, but our lives are changed forever when we do this. Beyond that, we need money. We need prayer. The need is endless. Gene is going to ask you at the end to sponsor a caregiving kit for these people in Uganda that you’ve just seen. We’re going to have a retiring offering today to help pay for those caregiving kits and ask some of you to come out on Saturday and help us put the kits together.
I’ve had some people say to me, “Well, Jim, shouldn’t we just be trying to take care of business here? Look at our economy, the church operating budget, the congregational giving. It doesn’t look so good.” And it doesn’t. I mean, we’ve fallen a quarter of a million more behind just this last month, and we’re very concerned. We’re very concerned as a staff at the church. Very concerned. But you understand, we are the church of Jesus Christ. We are to serve him in good times and bad. I think sometimes the bad times, the hard times, are the greatest test because it’s easy to give out of abundance. It’s hard to give when you are in the midst of need. And when you are afraid, it’s hard to be generous. But the call of Christ is upon us, and I believe within this congregation we have the means to take care of the needs of the church and to reach out to the poor everywhere. We have the means, and we can do it if we’re faithful, if we’re committed. We can end this year strong in every way if we’re faithful. That’s the call of Christ upon his people in every generation, and the call—it doesn’t change, and so we’re called to action.
There’s even a deeper word for compassion in the Bible and that’s the word “eleos”—sometimes translated mercy. But the word eleos refers to a compassion that is given. You are moved and you respond. You act even though the person doesn’t deserve it. Maybe they’ve done something wrong. It’s an act of mercy—eleos—the deepest kind of compassion. This is the depth of the call of Christ upon his people with regard to compassion. We see this again and again in the Bible. You look at Luke 16 and you see the parable of Jesus about the rich man and Lazarus. As Jesus tells the story, the rich man lives in great wealth and in a wonderful mansion. He dines, Jesus says, sumptuously. Jesus tells us that the poor man, Lazarus, would gladly have eaten the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. And the poor man, Lazarus, was begging at this rich man’s gate. And the rich man just ignored him. He just ignored this poor man, and in the course of time they both died and Jesus tells us that the poor man went to paradise, Abraham’s bosom, and the rich man went straight to Hades. It’s a tough passage. It’s tough exegetically, it’s tough eschatologically (in terms of the final judgment), and it’s tough in terms of the theology of salvation. But we know this, we know this message is clear: We better care about the poor. That much is clear. Jesus is clearly saying we better care about the poor, and they are at our gates. They are at our gates, so we need to act.
We have 20 ministries in the inner city, approximately 20 ministries down there, some of which were founded by our church or by our church members, but all of which we hold hands with because the poor are at our gates. They are right here in Denver, and we need you to understand that every dollar you give here, part of it goes there. When you don’t give here, it doesn’t just hurt us and our Sunday school and our youth programs and all of our programs, it hurts the inner city. It even hurts the poor around the world, because part of every dollar you give goes out. We take special offerings from time to time like we will today. We just need to be faithful, and we need people to give their time. People will go tutor, or mentor, or just visit somebody who is poor and hurting, somebody who will go pray, somebody who will bring the love of Jesus.
We need you. We need your time. We need your talent. We need your treasure, and the words of Jesus are clear. In our passage of Scripture for today, in Matthew 25. I don’t know about you, but I think that parable of the sheep and the goats is kind of scary. Isn’t that a scary parable? You’ve got the right hand, the left hand, “Come, oh blessed of my Father. Depart from me, cursed.” It’s all about, “I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was a stranger, I was naked, I was sick, I was incarcerated.” Do you care? “Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these, you’ve done it unto me.” So, the call of Christ upon his people is for compassion that results in action and provision.
Just this last week I was reading a story by a guy named Brandon O’Bryan, and he was telling a story of when he was in 2nd grade. Christmas was approaching and at school they sponsored a store, which exhibited different products that you could give your parents or other friends for Christmas, and they had a catalog that had some stuff that you could give. So, Brandon went and emptied his piggy bank and he had lots of coins in there that he’d saved up over time and he brought it to school and he was going to get his parents some really cool gifts.
But as he went through the catalogs and he looked through the stuff he realized he really liked it for himself. So, he took that money and bought himself a bunch of stuff, bought himself all the stuff he liked and bought himself a bunch of stuff. And then at the end with a little bit of money he got his dad a keychain, a little keychain with five little one-inch screwdrivers on it. And I’m reading this story and Brandon O’Bryan says it turned out to be kind of cool because his dad loved it and hung it from his rear-view mirror in his car for years because it reminded him of Brandon. And he is saying God is like that—even our smallest offering is precious to him.
I understand where Brandon is coming from, because God does love us like a father, but other than that I think that’s pure bull. God doesn’t want your leftovers. See, that’s the problem Cain had in the very beginning as you go to Genesis 4. Something was wrong there. God’s not always pleased and he doesn’t want your leftovers. I don’t see anywhere in the Bible where it says God wants your leftovers. God wants your firsts, and he wants your best. He wants us to learn to live to give generously, sacrificially. He wants us to learn to love. He wants us to learn commitment. And in this culture, it’s hard, very hard.
You know our daughter Heather is in MOPS and MOPS is a wonderful program. We have 2 wonderful MOPS groups here at the church with great leaders and teachers, but in some of the literature that Heather was given in MOPS just a couple of weeks ago, we were stunned to see that she was being told that she shouldn’t give to the church until she’s paid off all of her debt, including her mortgage. Don’t give to anything until you’ve paid off all of your debt, including your mortgage. I was thinking, “What crazy teaching is that?!” You realize that the church of Jesus Christ would just shut down all across this nation in one year if people practiced that. What’s the percentage of people who’ve paid off their mortgage? It can’t be one percent.
I’ll tell you what God wants. He wants your first fruits. That’s what the Bible says. He wants your first and your best. He wants you to begin with giving to him. That’s where he wants us to begin and his promise is clear. If we will begin there, he blesses his people. And this teaching is very, very clear in the Word of God. You look at the widow’s mites. The Bible tells us that Jesus was sitting in Jerusalem outside the temple looking at the treasury. And the treasury had 13 trumpets and these 13 trumpets were money receptacles where people could come and put their money that they were giving to the temple and the church, or to the synagogue and to God.
People came and they made their offerings in these 13 trumpets, and Jesus is watching. And you’ve got a bunch of rich people come and they throw in some money here and throw in some money there, probably feeling pretty good about themselves. Jesus continues to watch, and this widow comes and she’s poor. She’s suffered great loss, but she takes two copper coins and Jesus watches her put them in one of the trumpets and Jesus marvels. He says to the disciples, “I tell you these others have given out of their abundance. But she has given more than they have because they have given out of their abundance but she has given out of her poverty and she has given all that she has.” I think these times test us, and I think Jesus is still watching.
Remember that God provides. God is Jehovah Jireh. He always will be. He’s the Lord who provides. Remember the end of Matthew 6 and the other parable that Jesus told about, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and its righteousness and you will be given everything you need. As God feeds the birds of the air and he clothes the lilies of the field, God will feed and clothe us.” I really think this is a test of our faith, the times in which we now live. We should seek social justice for the poor. We should respond in compassion and provision and then seek social justice.
A couple of months ago I received a few emails from some of you who were upset because I mentioned social justice in one of my sermons. And these emails said I shouldn’t mention social justice because that’s liberal terminology, which has come out of liberalism. And it is true that liberal theologians kind of created the term social justice, but the term is wonderful. It’s an absolutely appropriate term. Don’t you want a just society? Don’t you think Jesus wants a just society? We’re the church of Jesus Christ. We’re called to free the oppressed and we’re called to seek to make this world a place of greater fairness. And this call is upon the church of Christ. It’s part of helping the poor, it’s part of hope. Part of bringing hope to the poor of the world is that in every way we would respond to the call of the Church of Christ.
As we close, I want to mention this can. I brought it up here. You’ve never seen me bring a can up front. This is condensed milk, and it’s Borden’s Condensed Milk with Elsie the Cow, the Borden symbol. Borden’s is a very old company, right? They’ve been around since the 1850’s and their products are still on the shelves of grocery stores and supermarkets. I want to tell you a story about William-Borden.
William Borden graduated from high school in 1904 in the city of Chicago and he was the heir to the entire Borden fortune, and it was vast. So, he graduates from high school in Chicago, 1904, and his parents give him a little gift for graduating from high school: A trip around the world. He gets this trip, which in 1904 was an amazing adventure, but what his parents didn’t know was that this trip around the world would radically alter William Borden’s life. So, William Borden heads out around the world and he begins to see other nations and other cultures, other peoples. He sees vast pockets of poverty, and Jesus touches his heart. William Borden had made some kind of commitment to Christ when he was very young, but on this trip around the world he sold out. He gave himself completely to Christ, and in his Bible before he got back home, he wrote, “No reserves.” No reserves. Don’t hold anything back. “No reserves.” He wrote those two words in the back of his Bible.
He came back to Chicago. He went to Yale. Like so many rich kids, he went to Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, and at Yale he started a Bible study. He started a Bible study, and he began to get involved with poor people in New Haven, and he would go out on the streets and he would help the people who were destitute. He remembered “No Reserves.” Hold nothing back. And so, in his Bible study, because the flame of Christ was in William Borden, people were drawn to the Bible study and drawn to the prayer times. And pretty soon, by the end of his freshman year, 150 Yale students were in those Bible study prayer groups. 150. But get this: by his senior year, William Borden had 1,000 of the 1,300 students at Yale in those Bible study prayer groups. 1,000 out of the 1300 students. Oh, that that would happen again at Yale today.
You know, next month we have Mark Brewer coming here. Mark Brewer is pastor of Bel Air Presbyterian Church and one of my best friends. Mark led a Bible study group up at Colorado State University some years ago. That Bible study grew to 650 CSU students, and he would invite me from time to time to come up and share with the college kids. And I marveled at 650 kids in a Bible study group, but that was 650 out of thousands. William Borden had a 1,000 out of just 1,300. They were split into smaller Bible study prayer groups all over the campus. It was an amazing movement.
Now, after he graduated from college, William Borden was touched so powerfully by Christ that he resolved he would give his life to serving the poor. He continued his ministries around New Haven, but he resolved that he would take Jesus and the love of Jesus to the poor in China. And so, he wrote in the back of his Bible after college, “No Retreat.” Hold nothing back and never quit. Keep going. So, he went to seminary. William Borden went to seminary and all through seminary he continued his work with the poor. And then after seminary he headed to Egypt to learn Arabic in Egypt because he wanted to work with Arab speaking Muslims in China. While he was in Egypt learning Arabic, he came down with spinal meningitis. One month later, William Borden died. And in the back of his Bible in Egypt he’d written one more time, “No Regrets. No Reserves. No Retreat.” No Regrets. That was the final thing he wrote.
I promise you I don’t know how long any of you are going to live. I don’t know how long I’m going to live. I know this: Whatever time is given to us, if we serve Jesus, if we say “no reserves” and “no retreat,” we’ll have no regrets. When the day ends, at the end of the day we’ll say, “no regrets.” I promise you. If we’ll serve the cause of Christ, if we’ll serve the kingdom of heaven, if we’ll serve his church, and if we’ll reach out to the poor in accordance with the call of Jesus upon his people, there will be no regrets. Let’s close with a word of prayer.