Our Father, how thankful we are that you're such a merciful God. You know our frames, you know that we're just dust. And you know we're sinful dust. And so you have sent your only beloved Son into this world to bear our sin, that we might be reconciled unto thee. And you've been so gracious as to give us your word that we might learn more and more about Jesus, our Savior. Lord, this evening, in just a brief meditation upon your word, we ask that you would show us Jesus afresh. Oh, Lord, that our love would grow deeper for him. that even the elements of the Lord's Supper that are before us, that they would be more meaningful to us. Sanctify this time to us, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, we turn together now to 2 Corinthians chapter 8. Both chapter 8 and chapter 9 are taken up with Paul appealing to the church, which is at Corinth, to generously give towards a relief fund in order to help out the brethren in Jerusalem. At the end of his first letter to the Corinthians, he exhorted them to be setting aside an offering for the poor every Lord's Day until he would come and collect that and take it again to Jerusalem. Now the second letter that we're looking at, it was written in A.D. 58. a delegation from the various churches. They're now with Paul and they're collecting the contributions from the various churches and they're on their way to Corinth. And Paul's obviously concerned about the Corinthians. He's afraid that covetousness may affect what they would give and that both he and the church would be embarrassed if it was a meager gift. And so he writes to them. And he encourages them to give very generously so that they would not be embarrassed. Well, basically, that's the context of chapter 8. Now, as Paul exhorts the church to give sacrificially, he sets before them a very compelling motive for doing so. And the compelling motive is the example of the Lord Jesus and what He sacrificed for them. Our text this evening is going to be 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 as Paul urges the Corinthians to be prepared with a very generous gift for the poor in Jerusalem, he reminds them of the grace of God that they had experienced. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Grace. We know that is God showing His love and His kindness towards those who don't deserve it. As a matter of fact, they deserve the exact opposite. They deserve God's wrath. They deserve to be condemned for their sins. But God shows them mercy. That's God's grace. Now, the believers at Corinth, they certainly did know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. In 1 Corinthians chapter 6, Paul reminded them of the deplorably sinful condition in which they were in when the grace of God first appeared to them. This is what we read in this chapter, and it describes the members of the Corinthian church. He says, Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Now, he's going to describe the members of the Corinthian church when he says, Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminates, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. They weren't that anymore. It all changed when the grace of God came to them and saved them and gave them new hearts and a new life. But they had been that when God first came to them. Such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. These believers, They knew what grace was all about. They understood that they justly deserved to experience the wrath of God, but instead they received the grace of God. They experienced the love of God, the kindness of God, the forgiveness of God. He tells them, but you were washed, that is, they were cleansed from all of the filth of their sin. He says, you were sanctified. They had been set apart from the world by God and set apart for God. And then he says, and you were justified. They had been forgiven for all of their sins and they were now clothed in the righteousness of God. It was all of grace. Although they didn't deserve that kind of mercy, they freely received it. Paul says, for you know, and that word know there means to know experientially. For you know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Can you say that this evening? Can you say, yes, I know the grace. I know the grace experientially of the Lord Jesus Christ. Don't settle for just knowing about. the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, but having never experienced it. Too many professing Christians, and I emphasize the professing aspect of it, too many professing Christians, they settle for knowing about Jesus, knowing about the grace of God, but they've never experienced it. Don't settle for a theoretical Christianity. Knowing the Bible, knowing all about the Lord Jesus, listening to sermons, but not knowing the Lord Jesus personally. Just knowing about him, it still leaves the heart empty until you experience the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Although grace is free to us, it costs the Lord Jesus Absolutely everything. That comes out in our text. It says, For you know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor. We receive God's grace. We receive it freely. We don't work for it. We will never deserve it. God's love, God's kindness, He just simply gives it to us. It's a free gift. It's by grace. It's all free. But Jesus paid a price. It cost Him everything. It says, although He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor. Philip Arthur, he says, poverty comes when he was plunged from the height of glory to the depths of this world's misery and squalor. Now, to appreciate how poor Jesus became, think about rich, how rich He had been. The text speaks of that. He says, although He was rich, the Lord Jesus was rich in divine glory. Jesus spoke of His divine glory in His high priestly prayer in John chapter 17. There He prayed, glorify thou me together with thyself, Father, with the glory which I ever had with thee before the world was." And we're given just a bit of a glimpse of Christ and all of His glory before He came to earth in Isaiah chapter 6. I'm sure we all know that text well. It says there, in the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting upon the throne. lofty and exalted with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings. With two, He covered His face. With two, He covered His feet. With two, He covered His... and He flew. And one called out to the other and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. That's our Savior before He came to earth. He was rich in divine splendor and majesty, with all of the heavenly hosts bowing down before Him in adoring worship. He was also rich in infinite wealth. Psalm 86 says, The heavens are thine, and the earth also is thine, the world and all that it contains. Deuteronomy 10 says, Behold, to the Lord your God belongs heaven and the highest heaven, the earth, and all that is within it. Psalm 50 says, Every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird of the mountains and everything that moves on the field. It is all mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine and all that it contains. You know, if you think about that, everything that you own, really, that all belongs to the Lord. It's all His. We just borrow it. The Lord, He created everything, and therefore, the Lord, He owns everything. The entire universe, it's all His. Now with that in mind, think about what the text is saying. Though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor. He became poor. He laid aside his royal vestures, laid aside his glorious crown. He laid aside the manifestation of his majesty and all of his glorious splendor. He left behind the adoration of myriads upon myriads upon myriads of angels and the praise of all of the celestial beings. He gave up heaven and he became poor. How poor did Jesus become? How poor? The Greek word which is here translated poor, it literally means to beg. It's the exact same word that describes Lazarus in Luke 16. And there it's rendered in most translations, Lazarus was a beggar. It's exactly the same word. Remember Lazarus covered with sores. He sat at the rich man's gate longing for crumbs. He had nothing. Jesus became poor using the same word. Even here in our text it tells us how poor Jesus became. Look at verse 9 again, it says so. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He is rich, yet for your sake He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich. Poverty, that means to have nothing. Our Savior was born in poverty. He lived in poverty. He died in poverty. His parents, they were common peasants. They were poor peasants. Do you remember that when they took Jesus as a baby up to the temple to make the sacrifice according to the law of Moses, the scriptures tell us that they offered up a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. That was known as a poor man's offering. Normally, the offering would have been a lamb and a pigeon or a lamb and a dove. But the law made provision for somebody who couldn't afford to buy a lamb. That was Joseph and Mary. They could not afford to purchase a lamb. So they gave a couple of turtle doves or a couple of pigeons. Jesus was born into a poor peasant's home. Think about his birth itself. He wasn't born in a palace where we would expect the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords to be born. He was born in a stable. In his cradle was an animal feeding trough. That was Jesus. He became poor. And then throughout his life, Jesus lived in poverty. He never arrived at the American dream, which we hear so much about today, that all Americans, they deserve to have the American dream. Jesus didn't have it. The Lord Jesus, he owned nothing except the clothes on his back, and even those clothes were taken away from him eventually. We find the Lord Jesus borrowing a boat to preach from. We find Him borrowing a donkey for the triumphal entry. We find Him borrowing an upper room in order to celebrate the last Passover with His disciples. We even find Him being put in a borrowed tomb when He died. Jesus once said, and this was saying so much, Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Do you realize what he's saying there? He is telling us that even animals and birds had more than he did. Spurgeon, he says, Christ was the prince of poverty. How poor is poor? Depths of poverty did the Lord Jesus descend. In Daniel 9 and verse 26, prophesying of Christ, it says there, and then after 62 weeks, Messiah will be cut off and have nothing. E.J. Young, he says this, these words seem to indicate that all which should properly belong to the Messiah He does not have when he dies. This is a very forceful way of setting forth this utter rejection, both by God and man. We have no king but Caesar, cried the Jews. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me, were the words from the cross. In that hour of blackness, he had nothing. Nothing but the guilt of sin. Of all those for whom He died, utterly forsaken, He was cut off. On the cross, Jesus hung naked, having absolutely nothing to His name except your sin and mine. That was it. You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor. Philip Hughes, he says, from the highest heaven he descended to Calvary in the grave. None was richer than he. None became poorer than he. Why did the Lord of Glory willingly sink so low and become so poor? Well, our verse tells us, reading it once again, you know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that though he is rich, yet for your sake he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich. Now, the riches that are ours in Christ Jesus, obviously they're not the temporal riches that the world has to offer. The riches that this world has to offer Really, they're superficial and they're only temporal. We always hear the expression, well, you can't take it with you. That's awfully true. You're going to give up everything that you've accumulated on earth when you take your last breath. Can't take it with you. Through Christ's poverty, we have been made rich spiritually, and we have been given eternal eternal wealth which will never be taken from us. Romans 10 verse 12 says, The Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call upon Him. Ephesians 1 verse 3 says, God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And having made that statement, then we know what chapter one, it's an absolutely glorious chapter in Ephesians. He goes on to tell us some of the spiritual riches that we have in Christ Jesus. He tells us that God has chosen us in Christ before the foundations of the world. That's something no amount of money could possibly buy. But you have that. He predestined us to adoption in Christ. You have been redeemed through the blood of Jesus. We're told in Ephesians 1 that He has forgiven us of all of our trespasses. It goes on to say that He has revealed to us the mysteries of His will in Christ Jesus. In Christ, we're told, we have an eternal inheritance awaiting for us and that we have been sealed in Christ by the Holy Spirit. No wonder when you get to Ephesians chapter 3, it speaks of the unfathomable riches of Christ. And all those riches belong to you, every single one of them, if you're trusting in Jesus. And the greatest of all of the riches of Christ is Knowing Christ, knowing in your heart that He loves you and you loving Him in return. You ask yourself, what gets better than that? Paul, he concluded that there isn't anything that gets better than that. He concluded there isn't anything that even begins to compare to that. He said in Philippians chapter 3 and in verse 8, He says, I count all things to be lost in view of their surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and I count them but rubbish in order that I might gain Christ. He's telling us there that there isn't anything in all of life that can even begin to compare with knowing the Lord Jesus. Everything else in life, in comparison, he says it's rubbish. And if you're using the King James Version, you know that it's even stronger language. It's dumb. It's a manure heap. There's nothing to compare with knowing Jesus. Jeremiah 9 and verse 23, it says this, thus says the Lord. Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom. Let not the mighty man boast of his might. Let not the rich man boast of his riches. But let him who boasts, boast of this. The other understands and he knows me. That I am the Lord who exercises loving kindness, justice and righteousness on the earth. For I delight in these things, declares the Lord. What we actually see in that statement is what the world values and what God values. He says, don't be boasting about your wisdom. Oh, that you're a great intellect. Or don't be boasting about your power, all of the authority and all of the influence you might wild over other people. And don't think you're all that great if you have a great deal of wealth. Don't boast in that nonsense. What God prizes above all else is that you know Him. There's nothing to compare to that. No wonder the psalmist testifies, my cup runneth over. And we all know what he began saying in that psalm, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He's not in want of anything else because he had the Lord Jesus as his shepherd. His cup was running over with the riches, and so is yours if you know the Lord Jesus." We're just bringing this to a conclusion with one final thought before we approach the table. I want you to notice verse 9 one more time. Here it says, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, That though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor. That you, through his poverty, might become rich. That's really a personal verse there, isn't it? Why did the Lord of Glory willingly sink so low and become so poor? What does he say there? He said it was for you. Think about that. It was all for you. When you come to the table this evening, it reminds us as we partake of the bread which speaks of the body that suffered so much for you, and we partake of the cup which speaks of His blood draining from Him, making atonement for your sins. It speaks of his absolute poverty. He gave up even his life. And he did it all for you. Why would he do that? You know the answer. Because he loves you. Because he loves you with the love that we can't even begin to comprehend. Oh, by the grace of God, as we reflect upon him, what He's gone through for us, when we reflect upon His great love for us, that God would work in our hearts, even this evening, melding our hearts so that our love would grow for Him.