01.02. The more wonderful fact that He became poor for our sakes

The more wonderful fact that He became poor for our sakes

If we have wondered at His eternal Riches, how much greater must be our amazement that such a One, whose Riches are incomprehensible, became poor. Indeed it is more wonderful that He became poor and furthermore that He became poor for “your sakes.” The precious Gospel text before us enlarges and expands and opens up the gracious, unfathomable depths of God’s Love. We shall find that He, who was so rich, became so poor, that He was stripped of all He had. And it was for us, reader! it was for your sake. Ah! can we ever hear enough of it? Do we ever get tired of hearing the old, the blessed story of His Love? There are such who seem to have gotten beyond this precious Gospel. “We want something deeper than the Gospel,” some people said to the writer some time ago. It did not take us long to find out that they never had fully tasted the sweetness of the old, old story of Jesus and His Love. The one who knows it and lives in fellowship with the Father and the Son can never hear it enough. The more we hear the more we realize its preciousness and its marvelous depths. No, we cannot get beyond the Gospel. But let us look at the more wonderful fact, that He became poor for your sakes. What does it mean? Aye, what does it mean! The Holy Spirit in the Epistle to the Philippians gives us the story of this more wonderful fact, the path of Him, who came from Glory to this dark, sin cursed earth. Let us read His words first of all.

“Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” (Php 2:6-8) And first of all we mention His incarnation. He made Himself of no reputation * * * He was made in the likeness of men, fashioned as a man. The mighty creator who in the hour of creation had formed the body of man out of the dust of the earth, took upon Himself that same form and entered the world He had called into existence. He did not empty Himself of his Deity; He came as Jehovah manifested in the flesh.

We read the holy, blessed facts of His entrance into the world in the Gospel of Luke. (Luke 1:35) The angel Gabriel said to Mary after He had announced the coming birth of the Saviour, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that Holy Thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” And then He was born. On the bosom of Mary rests He who ever was in the bosom of the Father. In miserable Bethlehem He begins His earthly life as a little babe.

“And she brought forth her Firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.”( Luke 2:7) What poverty it was, the poverty of incarnation! For Him who created all, who has all, whose glorious place was with the Father before the world was, for Him there was no room and His first resting place a manger. And yet this poverty in incarnation is far from being the fullest meaning of that, which is before us in this wonderful fact, He became poor for our sakes. All the poverty of the incarnation could not and cannot give peace and rest for the conscience of a guilty sinner. There is a deeper poverty of Him who was rich, than the poverty of incarnation.

It has not pleased the Holy Spirit to give us a record of the Blessed One as He grew up to manhood. There is just one record at the close of the second chapter in the Gospel of Luke, when He spoke that significant word, “How is it that ye have sought Me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” (Luke 2:48)What consciousness of His Personality and His Work they reveal! And then we read, “He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject unto them.” Nazareth was a poor little place with a poor reputation. There He went, He whose fellowship had been from everlasting with the Father. Had the Holy Spirit given us the story of these years in Nazareth we would have to read, no doubt, a story of poverty, of toil and perhaps want. In the Gospel of Mark we hear Him mentioned as ‘‘the carpenter.” He who later declared in the presence of the Jews in the Gospel of John “My Father worketh hitherto and I work,” (John 5:17). worked patiently, toiled on for years with His own hands. And yet these years of toil and poverty in Nazareth do not make known the full extent of His poverty. Were He still to labor and to toil upon the earth and live here in deepest poverty, all this could not save a single soul from death nor give a single sinner acceptance with God.

How poor He was we read too well in the Record of the Gospels. He had not where to lay His head. “The birds have nests and the foxes have holes, but the Son of Man has not where to lay His head.” Such was His mournful utterance; and there often in all probability was no resting place for that blessed, blessed head.

He hungered and came to a fig tree and found nothing there. His disciples, too, who had followed Him, were hungry and plucked the ears of corn on the Sabbath day. Women, the weaker vessel, ministered unto Him, and gave to Him, who, as we have seen before, saith, “The silver and gold is mine and the cattle upon a thousand hills.” Great as this poverty was, it is not that poverty, into which He went, for our sake. He became infinitely poorer than that. As he walked in humiliation upon the earth, in the likeness of man, though poor outwardly, poor in Nazareth, poor among His own, He was nevertheless rich. He still enjoyed the riches of the Father’s Love. As a boy He speaks of “my Father.” The Father’s smile was ever about Him and upon Him. God could do nothing else but love Him, who had left His bosom and became man. There was never a moment in that holy spotless life, when the Father’s presence and the Father’s Love were lacking. How precious it must have been for Him in all the poverty He had taken upon Himself, to enjoy the presence and fellowship of Him, with Whom He was and is One. And so as He walked among His own, the Father was with Him. The Riches of Love He still possessed. The Father opened His heavens above Him and said, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 4)This was at the beginning of His ministry, when He came out of the waters. The same voice spoke on the holy mountain at His transfiguration, when His wonderful Glory is upon Him. In the nights He spent in the desert or upon the mountains alone He enjoyed the loving fellowship with the Father, When He was in the desert, tempted by the devil, walking among the wild beasts, the loving arms of His Father were about Him.

Beloved reader! the fullest meaning of this more wonderful fact, He became poor for your sake can only be learned in one place and that place is, the Cross. In the story of the Cross do we find written the deepest poverty of Him who was rich There alone we see what it did cost God to bring us to Himself. But who is able to fully understand the poverty of the Cross? Jeremiah amidst the ruins of his beloved Jerusalem broke out in the most pathetic lament, “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord has afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger.” (Lamentations 1:12) But what was Jeremiah’s sorrow and suffering in comparison with the one the Man of Sorrows had? He alone could say, “Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.” (1 Peter 1:11)The sufferings of the blessed One had all been minutely predicted by His own Spirit throughout the Old Testament. They were foreshadowed in the sufferings of the Old Testament Saints, such as Abel, Isaac, Joseph, Job, David, Daniel and others. When He came He fulfilled them all and suffered in the shame and poverty of the cross. But who can measure the agony of the cross, through which that holy one had to pass? The so called old masters, great painters, have pictured from their imagination the crucifixion scene. These paintings may be works of art from a human standpoint; spiritually considered they are miserable productions, almost blasphemies. “There they crucified Him,” is all the Holy Spirit tells us of the awful act itself. Oh, what must it have been when He was delivered over into the hands of men, when He who was everlastingly clothed with the Father’s Glory, was stripped and nailed cruelly to that cross! Bleeding with His face marred, carrying upon His Blessed head, the crown of thorns, He is lifted up, on that awful cross, a spectacle for human and supernatural beings. There He hung forsaken by His own, left alone in the hours of His suffering. And yet if we were to stop with this and say that we have descended into the deepest place of the poverty of Him who was rich we would miss the mark. Though the suffering and the shame, the sorrows and the agony, were so great that they cannot be measured, yet do they not give us the fullest meaning of His poverty.

There is a poverty still deeper than the physical suffering and shame on the cross. That deepest poverty came up before Him, when He was in the garden Gethsemane.

“And when He was at the place, He said unto them, Pray that ye enter not into temptation. And He was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast, and kneeled down and prayed, Saying Father, if Thou be willing to remove this cup from Me, nevertheless not my will, but Thine, be done. And there appeared an angel unto Him out of heaven, strengthening Him. And being in agony He prayed more earnestly and His sweat was as if it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” (Luke 22:41-44)

Why all this agony? Did He shrink from physical suffering, from the cross and its shame? He did not, but was ready for the joy set before Him to endure the cross and to despise the shame. He knew the deepest poverty, the lowest depths into which He was to descend, the bitter cup He was to drink to the last bitter drop; on account of that He was in an agony. And what then is the deepest poverty of the Rich One, the Creator, the mighty, glorious Jehovah?

“Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, that is to say, My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:45-48) In that darkness which enshrouded Him, whose garment was Glory before the foundation of the world, in that solemn, fearful cry which came from His lips out of that darkness, we are face to face with the poverty of Him who was rich.

Here we see Him stripped of all that He had. The Riches of Love, the Riches of Glory were gone. No longer is there above Him the Father’s smiling face but in its place a holy, righteous God, whose hand smites the Sufferer on the cross. That Love which He always enjoyed as the Only Begotten, which was His delight while He walked the earth, is now turned into the fearful wrath of God. Stripped of all, smitten of God, He who knew no sin was made sin for us. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken Me ?” It is the only time the Lord Jesus addressed the Father as “My God.” But what did it mean? What did it mean for God to put His hand upon that beloved One who ever was His delight, who pleased Him? What must it have been for the Lamb of God to taste that awful death, He who had not deserved it; to be forsaken of Him with whom He ever was? Shall we ever know the depth of His suffering? Shall we ever find out in all eternity what it cost to redeem us? Perhaps we shall never know “the suffering of death” through which the Lamb of God had to pass, stripped of all His Riches, alone, forsaken on that Cross. And now, think of it, “for your sake He became poor” For you, dear reader, He came into the world, for you He went to that cross, for you He drank that bitter cup, for you He was forsaken of God.

Well may we sing:

O Christ, what burdens bowed Thy head! Our load was laid on Thee; Thou stoodest in the sinner’s stead - To bear all ill for me. A victim led, Thy blood was shed;

Now there’s no load for me.

Death and the curse were in our cup - O Christ, ‘twas full for Thee! But Thou hast drained the last dark drop, ‘Tis empty now for me. That bitter cup - love drank it up;

Left but the love for me.

Jehovah lifted up His rod - O Christ, it fell on Thee! Thou wast forsaken of Thy God; No distance now for me. Thy blood beneath that rod has flowed:

Thy bruising healeth me. The tempest’s awful voice was heard, O Christ, it broke on Thee; Thy open bosom was my ward;

It bore the storm for me. Thy form was scarred, Thy visage marred;

Now cloudless peace for me. For me, Lord Jesus, Thou hast died, And I have died in Thee; Thou’rt risen: my bands are all untied; And now Thou liv’st in me. The Father’s face of radiant grace Shines now in light on me. And who are we that He should enter into such depths of poverty and be forsaken by God? Who were these Corinthians let us ask. The First Epistle will give us an answer.

“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolators, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the Kingdom of God. And such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).

What an awful record this is! Yet for such the Son of God came down and became poor, even to the poverty of the Cross. What an awful record, I hear some one say, and adding, as it is done so often, so deep I have never fallen. In the language of the self-righteous Pharisee, Like the nominal Christians, righteous in their own eyes and despising others, they say “God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers or even as this publican. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I possess.” (Luke 18:9-12) Reader, is this your language? Is this your confession? If so how little you know of yourself and how little of the sweetness of the precious Gospel.

“It is related of the late Bishop Brooks, that, having to preach in the Massachusetts penitentiary, he was stricken dumb as he saw the long lines of fellowmen clad in the livery of shame, shamble, lockstep, to their places in the chapel. For he said: “How may I preach to these men? What know I of thieves, murderers and forgers? I have done none of these things. Between them and myself is a chasm, hell deep, which I can neither overpass to get to them, nor they to get to me.” And then God showed him his own natural heart. Down through layers of Puritan tradition, of moral habit, inherited from generations of God-fearing ancestors, the revealing ray shot and lighted up the real heart underneath, and the man of God saw there the possibility of every crime represented in the long rows of furtive-eyed, low-browed, bestial-faced humanity before him - and then he preached to them as a sinful man to sinful men.”

Listen to the description of your heart, the natural heart of man, as given by Him, our blessed Saviour, “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” (Matthew 15:1-19)

All these evil things are in our hearts. There is a murderer there and a fornicator, a thief and a robber. The Grace of God may have kept it back, from the fullest manifestation, but it if there. How true it was when Rowland Hill cried out when he saw a murderer with the rope around his neck led to the gallows, “There goes Rowland Hill, if it were not for the Grace of God.” Such are we. Vile, corrupt sinners; enemies of God. Again let me point you to the Word of God, what God has to say of us, “There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes * * * all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:10-19.) This is what we are by nature. God Himself tells us all this and He alone knows the depth of our degradation, of our vileness, our sinfulness, our enmity and ungodliness. And yet knowing it all He gave the best He could give. He gave up Him, the Son of His Love. Oh listen! listen! - He put His hand upon Him in that awful poverty of the cross and smote Him in our place. Oh! wonderful, wonderful Love! It passeth knowledge * * * “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. BUT GOD commendeth His Love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-9) Will you not now bow your head and heart in the Presence of God and believe the record! Take your place before Him as a vile, lost, guilty sinner. You have never done anything good; you can never do anything good. Unsaved reader, acknowledge yourself a vile sinner before God and believe on the Son of God. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” What greater proof could God give of His Love than the one He has given, by putting His beloved Son in the place of the vilest sinner. He spared not His beloved Son so that He could be able to spare the sinner, who believes on the Son. He became poor or your sakes, for your sakes. Do you believe it? Will you accept Him as your Saviour?

O Thou who didst Thy glory leave, Apostate sinners to retrieve From nature’s deadly fall, - Thou, Thou hast bought us with a price; Our sins against us ne’er can rise, For Thou hast borne them all.

See Him for our transgressions given; See the blest Lamb of God from heaven, His Riches - Our Riches For us, His foes, expire; Rejoice! rejoice! the tidings hear! He bore, that we might never bear, Th’ Almighty’s righteous ire. And we who have believed and know Him, know that He died for us we who confess with the great apostle “who loved me and gave Himself for Me,” how we need a greater conception of that mighty Love, which gave Him, that Love which went to the cross into such a poverty. We should look upon every unsaved one, the lowest, the most miserable, the most unloveable from a human standpoint, as one for whom the Son of God gave up His eternal Riches and became so poor.

Look at the ones in yonder street of our great cities. How often we see them tottering along or in the gutter. There he lies covered with the filth of the street, perhaps with his own blood sunk beneath the beast. Ah! look upon that miserable one, that homeless tramp, as one for whom the Son of God cried upon the cross “My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me ?” For Him His precious blood was shed, for that one He tasted that awful death. How else can we but love that poor, miserable sinner, that homeless outcast, whom God loved, for whom God gave His Son, for whom Christ died. We are a debtor to that one. The Lord fill our hearts with that burning love which He has for poor lost sinners that we may yearn, yea agonize for the salvation of those for whom Christ became poor.