He Became Poor So That You Might Become Rich

and we cannot find any place to put him on the planet Earth. And so where do they end up? They end up in a stable. This is the humble beginning of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And yet it's difficult for us to relate to it because for a number of reasons. Again, none of us have, you know, we didn't live 2,000 years ago and we're... used to our modern amenities, and then on top of that, we're used to the pretty stories. You know, my children just recently watched the cartoon movie, The Star, right? It tells the story of Jesus' birth from the perspective of a donkey, and it's cute and funny, and Joseph and Mary are cute, and you know, and so you have this beautiful scene of Jesus in a manger, you know, in a barn, and it's all cute.

And so we have a hard time understanding the real grinding physical poverty of the event. And so I had an experience recently that helped bring that more to life for me. My parents are missionaries in the Congo, and I recently had the opportunity to go visit them for a few weeks in the Congo. And they work and live in a place called Bandaka. It's on the equator, and it's a very poor place. Very poor place. There are some paved roads in the city, but most of it is red dirt, and you literally have to own a 4x4 Land Cruiser, Toyota Land Cruiser, in order to... Yeah, I'll show you pictures of the car we drove. It's an awesome car. But if you're going to get around, you have to have a vehicle like that, or you just have to go by foot, because of how awful the roads are.

Well, the day I got there, I discovered that one of the guys that works on the property where my parents live, his wife had a baby the night before. It had been raining cats and dogs the night before, and his mode of transportation to get to the hospital was a motorcycle. So imagine taking your wife in the rain on a motorcycle to give birth to your son or daughter. It doesn't sound comfortable, does it? When they got there, there was nobody there. And so he literally had to deliver his own child on some table in a room where there was nobody there. They were just not there. That would not be a pleasant experience. And all the women say amen, right?

This is the kind of poverty that our Lord and Savior, the God of the universe, was born into. And so if you're paying attention, you'll notice that it bears no resemblance whatsoever to what you and I are planning to do this Christmas. Right? There's no resemblance. You're planning to maybe take some time off from work, to hang out with friends and family, to eat some good food, to share presents. That's nothing like what happened to my friend Jean Robert and his wife back in the Congo. And it's nothing at all like what happened to Joseph and Mary on the first Christmas morning. So it's confusing, right? Because if you love Jesus and you love to read the story of his humble birth, and then you contrast it with the actual Christmas traditions that we have today, you begin to wonder, what are we even doing? Is this right?

The cranks and the critics and the Scrooges of our time love to point out that we make a practice of remembering and celebrating this humble story of poverty by eating another Christmas cookie as we mosey on over to the Christmas tree to open our gifts. Doesn't that seem hypocritical? You're like, what gives? Well, I want to convince you today that it's actually supposed to work that way. Not the gaudiness and the greediness, and I'll get to that. it's supposed to be a celebratory, exciting time. And to prove it, I'm going to take a look today at Paul's second letter to the Corinthians. Now, in chapters 8 and 9 of this letter, Paul is working hard to convince the Corinthians to support the work of his ministry without commanding them to do so. They had expressed an earnest desire to participate in it, and he wanted them to do so cheerfully and without being forced to do so.

So let's look now at 2 Corinthians 8, and I'm going to read the whole section, verses 1 through 9. Now, brethren, we wish to make known to you the grace of God which has been given in the churches of Macedonia, that in a great ordeal of affliction, their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed in the wealth of their liberality. For I testify that according to their ability and beyond their ability, they gave of their own accord, begging us with much urging for the favor of participation in the support of the saints. And this, not as we had expected, but they first gave themselves to the Lord and to us by the will of God. So we urged Titus that as he had previously made a beginning, so he would also complete in you this gracious work as well.

But just as you abound in everything, in faith and utterance and knowledge and in all earnestness and in the love we inspired in you, see that you abound in this gracious work also. I am not speaking this as a command, but as proving through the earnestness of others the sincerity of your love also. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor. so that you, through his poverty, might become rich. Please pray with me as we continue here. Father God, I do pray that now as I preach and as we hear your word, that it would change our hearts. Father, help us. We need your Holy Spirit to come. And so we pray that you would come now. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. So the back story of this verse, verse 9, that I'm focusing on today, is that...

Paul is trying to convince the Corinthians to give generously in the support of the churches. And he uses the generous giving of a much poorer Macedonian church as an example and an encouragement for the Corinthians. Now, at this point in the sermon, you might be thinking that this text is maybe better suited as the kickoff for a capital campaign of some kind. And just to let you know, I don't know of any capital campaign that you guys are about to start, so don't worry. I don't think you're in the middle of a capital campaign, are you? Okay, very good. Well, my purpose today is to focus on verse 9. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you, through his poverty, might become rich.

So what does the poverty of the Christmas story have to do with eggnog and colorful wrapping paper? Everything. The whole point of Christ's poverty was to make us rich. And our celebrations and our gift-giving flow out of that wealth. That wealth which we have because of Christ's poverty is what drives the whole thing. And what is the wealth that we receive? From Christ, what are the riches that He gives us in His poverty? It says right there in verse 9, His grace. In Ephesians 1, it says it slightly differently. It says this, In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, the forgiveness of our sins, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. Is this good news to you?

Is it sweet to you? It all depends on whether you feel and know your need to be forgiven by a holy God and that you have been forgiven by a holy God, that you are his son, his daughter. Do you even know that one day God, the righteous judge, will judge all mankind? If you do know it, then the riches of God's grace through Christ is good news. It's fantastic news. Because it means that He took your sins and your filth and your poverty so that you could be wealthy. And what is the wealth that we receive? It's the love of God. And so we celebrate the love of God at Christmas. That's the point.

That's why we throw parties and give gifts. We do it to remember and celebrate God's lavish generosity to us poor, miserable sinners. Now, earlier in our passage, we read how the Macedonians, who were much poorer in a material sense, were nevertheless much richer in this sense. Their hearts overflowed with generosity because of the love of God. But the Corinthians, on the other hand, were much stingier. They hadn't either realized or hadn't received that wealth. They didn't understand it the way that the Macedonians did. Now, whenever we talk about how poor people can be rich without money, the critics and the cranks begin to come out right away. I'm going to deal now with a couple objections to what I've said so far.

There's a wonderful line from Charles Dickens that expresses this perfectly in the Christmas Carol. How many of you have read the Christmas Carol? Okay, if you haven't read it, read it. It's wonderful. It makes me cry every time. So Ebenezer Scrooge, you all know Ebenezer Scrooge, right? If you don't know Ebenezer Scrooge, you know about Scrooge McDuck, right? Same idea, right? He's a miserly old man who loves nothing but his money. And so Ebenezer Scrooge's nephew walks into his office at the beginning of the story and wishes Scrooge a Merry Christmas. Scrooge responds with his trademark bah humbug. And then here's a little excerpt. Christmas a humbug, uncle, said Scrooge's nephew. You don't mean that, I'm sure. I do, said Scrooge. Merry Christmas. What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.

Come then, returned the nephew gaily, what right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough. It's a good answer, right? In that witty Dickens kind of way. Scrooge's words are those of a man of the world. And his nephew's response helps remind us that there is more to wealth than what meets the eye. But it doesn't open up to us the full picture of what's going on. Another way to make Scrooge's criticism that hits maybe even more close to home for us might be like this. So you're telling me, Lucas, you're trying to make this claim that Christmas is actually about celebrations and having a party and rejoicing. You're telling me that, and you're trying to justify...

The orgy of greedy consumerism every December that we have here in our nation by saying we do it to remember the poverty and hardship suffered by Jesus Christ. Well, that's pretty convenient for you, right? That's convenient for you, Lucas, to do that. These are the words of the Scrooges of the world. And my response is simply, no. That's not what I'm doing. That's not what I've done. And the problem with that criticism is that it does not recognize the difference between the greedy consumerism that certainly is present in our country, but it doesn't recognize the difference between that and the generosity of heart that flows from love. Yes, of course, Scripture says that it's better to give than to receive, and there's no better time to remember that than Christmas, right?

And so when a Christian prepares for Christmas, he prepares to give heartily and cheerfully out of the abundance that God has given to him. We don't prepare for Christmas by greedily imagining all the stuff we want to accumulate. And in fact, Christmas, another way to say it, or to ask it, is this. Is Christmas a good time to teach our children not to be greedy or envious or selfish? Well, in one sense, yes. Those temptations will certainly be there, right? If you've got a couple kids, you know that little Johnny will get the blue truck, and little Tommy will get the red truck, and all of a sudden there's a fight, right? The green-eyed envy monster comes out, and Tommy just must have the blue truck, and so you have a teaching opportunity right there for Johnny and Tommy. We don't deny that sin is present, even in our best intentions at Christmastime. We don't deny the depravity of man. We believe in it.

And so we have opportunities to think about those things and to deal with those things, but the real lesson you need to teach your children, the real message of Christmas, is the glory of God's inestimable gift of love through Jesus Christ. Does your heart glow at the thought of it? The Scrooges of the world are going to deny that there is such a thing as a heart filled to overflowing with love. because of the work of Christ. They are going to sit back and cynically accuse Christians and those who celebrate Christmas, accuse them of doing it opportunistically, that they're doing it selfishly. They're going to use Christmas to nurse their own grievances and bitternesses. At the center of this criticism is a jaded, cynical, view of the world that there simply is no such thing as a new birth or a new heart. But Christ has come and made all things new. He has given us an incredible gift. Is that true or not? If it is true, is it appropriate to receive the gift by looking depressed and morose? Of course not. We celebrate. In Matthew 9,

the disciples of John came to Jesus asking him, Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast? And Jesus said to them, The attendance of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. And certainly in our calendar of the year, there's times of mourning, times of fasting. There's times throughout the year to do different things. But now we celebrate the coming of the Messiah. And so we party. Now, another implicit claim, objection to what I'm saying today, is that the physical aspects of our celebration are somehow dirty or hypocritical because they focus so much on the physical, on food and drink, on presence and comfort. Dirty, the claim is that that's dirty because, after all, everything fleshly in this world is tainted by sin. And hypocritical because shouldn't that money that you spend on a party, on nice things to eat, shouldn't that go to feed the poor? A real Christian wouldn't need eggnog and Christmas lights to celebrate. A good spiritual Christian wouldn't need all that physical stuff to celebrate Christmas. A good Christian just needs his Bible and a place to sit in the corner and to meditate on God's goodness to him. Maybe a good Christian would spend their Christmas at the soup kitchen and not at the party with their loved ones. Now this is an old argument.

and a silly one, but it is very common even among our churches. It is the argument that was given when the woman poured the lotion on Jesus' feet. And we may not make it explicitly, but we often assume it. And the answer is simply this. Jesus came in the flesh. We are both spirit and flesh. And so we worship God with both our spirit and our bodies. We rejoice with both our spirit and our bodies. And so this year, I want to tell you, I'd go so far as to say that if your body isn't into it, I question whether any part of you is. You know, some make the claim that I worship God just inside my head or something like that, but it's ridiculous. God came in the flesh to teach us that we need to worship God with our bodies. And that doesn't It's not at odds at all with the need for us to worship in our hearts, truly, where no one can see, right? Of course, people can be hypocritical and fake it. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't do it honestly, right? This is a point that Pastor Tim down in Bloomington has made again and again over the years in regards to our posture in worship. When we pray, we kneel.

When we worship, we raise our hands and move our bodies, doing something, anything to demonstrate that we feel something akin, something that goes along with the words that we are singing and speaking, right? Our bodies should reflect the words that we're saying. And so, of course, you can and should celebrate Christmas with acts of mercy and kindness. Of course you should do that. party, a lavish banquet celebrating the coming of the king. I want to deal with one more objection before I end today, and that is, and my reason for doing so is because nowadays we have a temptation It goes right along with our temptation to ignore the bodily aspects of our worship and our work and our praises to God. And that is to psychologize or to mythologize our faith. This would be the tack that someone would take when they say, well, I can celebrate love in my own way without Jesus.

Right? I can celebrate Christmas without Christ. I don't need your Jesus stuff to celebrate Christmas. And this is what you might get by listening to Joel Osteen, ironically, or maybe Oprah Winfrey, or maybe even Jordan Peterson. These are some names that maybe you don't know, maybe you know. But my point here today is that Christmas is not the power of positive thinking. Right? It's not a self-help time. Christmas is Jesus coming in actual human history to physically die on the cross for our sins. What does the book of Revelation say is going to happen at the end of time? It says, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. That's actually going to happen. And what we do now is practice for that time.

At the end of time, we're going to have a big party, and so we are practicing now for what will come later. And it does not honor God for us to deny His Son and what His Son physically did for us. We must, as the psalmist says, kiss the Son. He is the one that made the sacrifice for us. And so, this Christmas, I want you to think about The poverty that Jesus willingly took on Himself that we might become rich. And as we prepare for Christmas, my question to you today is are you willing to make yourself poor so that others might be rich? And how do you do that? How do you make yourself poor? Well, this is what all of you ladies who are preparing a feast for Christmas are doing. You're thinking about others.

in order to bless them and to love them and to show the love of God to them. That's what preparing a party is. That's the whole point. That's what thinking about a gift and giving someone a gift is. You're thinking about what they need and what they want and what they love and what they would appreciate. And you're giving it to them. You're making yourself poor in order to show them God's love. And so today, the question is, what is it that God wants us to give, right? What is it that God wants us to give? You might be tempted to think that it's money, but my answer to you is, sure, it's money, but it's not money, not just money. It's your time, it's your energy, it's your attention, whatever way you can measure wealth.

That's what he wants us to spend liberally that others might be made rich. You know, we're tempted at this time of year to begin to think about all the ways that maybe we've been stingy and selfish. And that may be true. Maybe you've been greedy. You know, maybe you've been greedy this Christmas season and been thinking more about what you want rather than what others want. And my answer to you, and so maybe you're tempted as a result of that to be less liberal to say, well, okay, you know, I'm no longer qualified to love others. I'm no longer qualified to be generous. And my answer to you is good grief. You know, even as I was preparing this sermon where I'm trying to stir up your affections and your heart.

I was grumpy and short with my children and with my wife, even as I'm preparing to preach this sermon. And so, do I honor Christ by penitentially, by sorrowfully for my sin, sitting in the corner and sucking my thumb? No, this is not the way Christians show God that we have... Our thankfulness to Him for His great, amazing gift. We ask forgiveness for our sins, and then we get back to planning the party. This is what we do. And I want to leave you with two verses to end today, to stir up our hearts as we prepare to throw a party this Christmas, to show others the love of Christ this Christmas. One is from Psalm 119 that I love very much. It says, for you will enlarge my heart. That idea of God enlarging our heart. Boy, do we need that. Right? We need that. Our hearts are naturally stingy and tight. And we need God to enlarge our hearts. And 2 Corinthians 9.6, later in our book that we read from earlier today, it says this,

He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Christ sowed bountifully and will reap bountifully. Let us sow bountifully this Christmas, and let's party like real Christians. Merry Christmas. Let's pray.