Partial transcript of a talk by Thabiti Anyabwile at Creating Options Together™ 2016 — 14 December 2016
Why does God leave some people in poverty?
When God called a church out of the world He could have called all people out of poverty, but He didn’t. Have you ever wondered why?
I want to give you five reasons why God has left rich and poor together, and how it is they are meant to disciple or benefit from one another.
God’s placed us together to remind us of who we are.
One of the major problems with the Christian life is that we regularly forget. As someone has said, “Christians leak.” We leak our own identity.
In Deuteronomy 24:19-22 God calls his people to remember who they were in Egypt. They were slaves. We’re not servants, not children of the king, not “we are too blessed to be stressed,” we were slaves.
If you’ve never been a slave, you may be tempted to pride at the suggestion. If you’ve ever been a slave, you may be tempted to shame at the recollection.
Our living together, rich and poor is meant to help some of us learn to live without shame and others of us, without pride, that we might disciple one another in dignity and humility.
God’s placed us together to show us how we treat Him.
Proverbs 14:31 says, “Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors Him.”
We must see the face of God in the face of the poor.
True worship, as James 13:9 says, has a lot to do with how we care for the orphan. That’s “true religion undefiled.” And as Jesus says, “As much as you do unto the least of these, you do unto Me.”
Over and over again in Scripture, God keeps saying that He’s kept the poor among us so that we might be able to diagnose how we really regard Him.
If you read the Bible carefully, you’ll see it’s not romantic about poverty, but it does elevate the status of the poor. In other words, the rich guys are not the good guys in most of Scripture. We can’t be paternalistic in this conversation.
The poor aren’t our fix-up project. They are the clear and present image of God, the prompts of practical worship.
God’s placed us together to soften hardened hearts.
In Zechariah 7:9-14, God calls His people to care for the poor among them. Yet they stopped their ears and hardened their hearts like diamonds.
The mission of the church isn’t so much to end poverty, but to end our hardness of heart.
I remember a traffic intersection back home, where I sat in my little GMC Acadia. A brother with dreads and tattoos was crossing the street in front of the car. I had to beat back in my own mind words like “thug.”
These things aren’t just problems out there with those other people who don’t get it. They’re problems in our hearts.
Our hearts get hard if we don’t keep smashing them with the hammer of God’s Word.
God’s left the poor among us to check our hearts, to soften our hearts, that we might demonstrate genuine love in the care of our neighbor.
God’s placed us together to cure pride and idolatry, while at the same time increasing assurance.
In 1 Timothy 6:6-10, Paul writes to Timothy, urging him toward contentment and warning him against the love of money which snares people into “harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.”
I recently watched a video of a man under a bridge testifying that God had never forsaken him, that he was depending upon God.
Yet there are wealthy people living in mansions depending upon their money. They don’t remember, or know, that money makes itself wings and flies away.
1 Timothy 6:17-18 tells the rich not to set their hearts on riches but on God, and to do good, “storing up treasures as a good foundation for the future.” Why? “So that they may take hold of that which is truly life.”
It’s as if God says, “I’m going to meet your need.” He then fixes a point called need. Then in the generosity of wealthy, the material needs of the poor are raised to that point of need. But at the same time in the giving of the wealthy, the wealthy are being brought down to the level of need.
There’s a saying, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” But God has purposed, not to create a rising tide, but to create a sinking heart. Our heart is to come down to meet the neighbor, and to join the neighbor at the lower point in generosity and humility.
God has placed us together to cure partiality and prejudice.
James 2:1-9 addresses the preferential treatment Christians are giving to the rich as they gather together. James says, “‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are convicted by the law as transgressors.”
Bringing together rich and poor is God’s way of curing our prejudice. For that to be true, we actually have to admit what’s being described in James, that we get offended at the presence of the poor. We do put them in a lower place, and this is an evil that God hates and for which we should repent.
The poor can learn from the wealthy, but I think the tide of human history says what’s needed today is for the wealthy to learn from the poor.
Thabiti Anyabwile is one of the pastors at Anacostia River Church. He has served as an elder and pastor in churches in North Carolina; Washington, D.C.; and the Cayman Islands. After a few years as a practicing Muslim, Thabiti came to Christ. He and his wife, Kristie, have three children. Thabiti is the author of several books including The Life of God in the Soul of the Church.
This article is based on one of Pastor Anyabwile’s two talks at Creating Options Together 2016, a training event for Cru’s inner-city ministry. You can listen to his whole message here and enjoy further media content from the Creating Options Together Conference here.
Want to learn more about Cru's inner-city ministry? Click here.
