POOR YET PRECIOUS

Perhaps one of the greatest dividing factors among men is that between those who are rich and affluent, and those who are poor and destitute. So often wealth means influence and power; poverty is linked with obscurity. This subject is found in the Psalms, with their occupation with all aspects of human experience, including much that speaks of the rich and the poor. The rich are often castigated for their wrong approach to wealth; the cause of the poor receives sympathetic consideration, but the Lord is on the side of those who are poor.

“I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinketh upon me”, 40. 17; the context of this reflection is the psalmist’s sense of the pressures of evil around him. Innumerable evils compassed him about; his own sins had gripped him as in a vice, and shame tormented him, v. 12. So he cries to the Lord to deliver him from his enemies, v. 13, with desolations for those who seek his hurt, vv. 14-15, and delight for those who seek the Lord, v. 16. Then he pauses to reflect that, though poor and needy, perhaps obscure and unnoticed, yet he was the object of divine thoughtfulness, v. 17. In all our needs today, how lovely for us to realize that the divine thoughts that are higher than ours, and that will miss none of our needs, are towards us for our comfort and blessing. Note in Psalm 139. 17-18 the preciousness and plenitude of God’s thoughts towards His own.

“This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles”, Psa. 34. 6. Human poverty is not only the subject of divine thought but of divine action as well. “This poor man”! The emphasis here is on a personal experience of destitution. It is in the context where one is recounting the goodness of the Lord, vv. 4-5. Such goodness calls for praise to the Lord’s Name, v. 3. There is also the invitation to taste and see that the Lord is truly good, v. 8. It is good to realize that to enjoy the goodness of the Lord is not an experiment but a glorious experience.

We remember the involvement of the Lord Jesus with the cause of the poor, Luke 4. 18; 2 Cor. 8. 9. Our greatest poverty was measured when, as bankrupt sinners, we came to Him and He forgave us all, Luke 7. 41-42. It is in the sacrifice of the cross that we learn that, though poor, we are precious to Him.