MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 22:2
LEVELLING DOWN AND LEVELLING UP
I. The rich and the poor have much in common. They have, in fact, everything in common which is independent of silver and gold. At first sight this seems to include almost everything worth having, and it does include the best and most lasting good, and often much beside. We rejoice in the thought that many a poor man has as large a share of God’s blessed air and sunshine as his richer neighbour—that his bodily frame is as healthful and his home as full of love. But, alas! we cannot forget that poverty in many cases shuts out men and women from the gladdening and healthful influences of pure air and sunlight, and consequently shuts them up to bodily disease, and tends to produce moral unhealthfulness. As civilisation advances, and countries become more populous, the gulf between poverty and wealth in this respect seems to widen, and when we consider how many advantages, not only material but intellectual and moral, the very moderately rich possess over the very poor, we do not find so much in common between them as appears upon a slight view of the case. It is indeed true that all the blessings of life that money cannot buy are as much within the reach of the poor as of the rich; but how many good things—not only for the body, but also for the mind and heart—are not to be gotten without gold and silver. There is, however, one platform upon which they all meet, even in this life—one levelling force which brings them into an absolute equality. In the plan of redemption through Jesus Christ, and in all the blessed effects which flow from it, the rich man has no advantage over the poor man—the brother of low degree is shut out from nothing that his rich brother enjoys. In this sense, as in many others, we may use the prophet’s words: “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low” (Isaiah 40:4). It does this:
1. By declaring their common and universal sinfulness. Disease of body is a levelling power—fever makes no distinction between king and subject—between master and servant; while they are under its dominion the one has no immunity from the weakness and the pain of the other. So the Gospel plan declares concerning sin what experience testifies—that “there is no difference,” that “all have sinned” (Romans 5:12), and that its debasing and destroying power is alike in prince and peasant.
2. By offering the same conditions of redemption to all. A physician, when he visits his patients with the intention of doing his best to heal them, does not prescribe one kind of treatment to the rich and another to the poor. The conditions of recovery are not regulated by their rank, but by their disease. So with the Gospel remedy for the sickness of the soul. It is the same for every man. The strait road is not made wider for the man with money bags, the gate is opened as wide for the pauper as for the emperor.
3. By providing the same inheritance for all who accept the conditions. Every man who accepts the way of salvation has an equal right to claim God as his Father—has an equal liberty of access to Him (Ephesians 3:12), at all times—is sealed with the same spirit of promise, and has the same hope of blessedness beyond the grave. To each and to all it is said, “All are yours, and ye are Christ’s (1 Corinthians 3:23).
II. To God must be referred the lot to which each man is born. He, as the Creator, calls each man into being, and determines the sphere in which he finds himself when he awakens to consciousness and to a sense of responsibility. Man, as a free agent, has much to do with determining his lot in life when he arrives at mature years, but the circumstances surrounding his birth and earlier years, and the mental gifts with which he is endowed, have much also to do with it, and these are determined for him by God. So that He is not only the Maker of the man’s personality, but largely also of his position in the world.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
In the distinction between the rich and the poor there is something not altogether pleasant to the human mind. We are apt to recoil from it. Without much thought, by the mere spontaneous promptings of our feelings, we are apt to have some dissatisfaction as we behold the advantages of riches so unequally distributed among men. And frequently the dissatisfaction increases, as we can discover no just rule of this distribution; and as we behold more and more of the contrasted advantages and disadvantages of this distinction between the rich and poor. Something like this was, in my opinion, the feeling of the writer of this text. He saw the distinction between rich and poor; he felt amazed; he had a disliking for it which set his mind at work. He thought the matter over patiently and religiously. And when he had done he gathers up the whole substance into this single aphorism and writes it down. That was his satisfaction. There he left the matter.… He had studied it as he studied botany: From the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that springeth out of the wall. He had contemplated the loftiness of the rich and the lowliness of the poor, wherein they differed, and wherein they agreed, and especially who made them to differ.… His faith in God and constant recognition of Him would lead him to take along with him in all his contemplations the idea of the one Great Maker of all; and then, when he found things strange, dark, or revolting to him growing out of the distinctions between rich and poor, he leaves all that with God. But before he comes to this, and while he is engaged amid things which he can understand, he finds another side of the question which at first disquieted him.… Coming to examine the matter, he finds that distinction is not the real affair after all; that there are more agreements than distinctions—more resemblances than differences: the Maker of all has made the all more alike than unlike.… They meet together in their origin and their situation as they enter the world. They are equally dependent, helpless, miserable.… The two classes are very much alike in their amount of happiness.… The rich man is not necessarily happy nor the poor unhappy … The passions which make men miserable are exercised by both classes without any visible difference in their effects … There is a substantial agreement in all the organs of perception and enjoyment, and much of our felicity here depends upon the organic constitution that makes us men.… In intellectual faculties there is the same strong resemblance. The perception, memory, imagination, reason, which God has given, He has been pleased to give with an impartial hand … There is one common end to our humanity; … among dead men’s bones you can find nothing to minister to human vanity. The rich and poor meet together in the tomb and at the final bar of God.—Dr. Spencer.
They meet often; yea, often is the rich forced to send for the poor, needing as much the help of his labour as the other doth the help of his money. But this maketh them to meet nearer yet, by causing the same who was rich to become poor, and he that was poor to become rich.… And they meet everywhere—there is no place that hath not both of them, and as there are many of the one, so there are many of the other.—Jermin.
For Homiletics on Proverbs 22:3 see on chap. Proverbs 14:16, page 364; on Proverbs 22:4 see on chap. Proverbs 3:1-18, pages 29, 34, 39.