My text this evening is in 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians chapter eight and verse nine. 2 Corinthians eight at verse nine. The Apostle Paul is the writer, and he says this, For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich. There are three things particularly which I would like to look at with you here this evening. First of all, in my text, we need to look at the subject that Jesus Christ was rich. Second, we need to look at this text which tells us that he became poor. And thirdly, we need to look at the text which tells us, he became poor so that we, you and I, could become rich through his poverty. So these three things we learn about the Lord Jesus Christ, and I think you would have to agree with me, dear friends, This is an extremely important subject because it deals with the most important person who ever lived upon the face of the earth, the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Three things about him then. First, he was rich. But then, eventually, he became poor. And he became poor because he wanted to do, he intended to do. Why? The answer is, he made himself poor so that he could make you rich. So those then are the three things I wish to look at with you this evening. And the first of them is this, We are told here that Jesus Christ was rich, though he was rich. So let's look at the meaning of these words. In what sense was the Lord Jesus Christ rich? Well, I have a number of things I wish to bring to your attention, and the first one is this. Jesus was rich because he was God. And you can't be richer than that, can you? Jesus Christ was and is Almighty God. I'm going to say a little more on that in a moment, but that's the first thing. Jesus is God. And because he was God, not simply rich, he wasn't just a millionaire or a multimillionaire. He was infinitely rich. Now, the next thing to say is this, that Jesus Christ is one of the three persons of God. There are three persons in God. There is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now, this is an extremely important subject to believe. I'm sorry that some of the religions that grow up in the world today, like Jehovah's Witnesses and others, they do not believe what the Bible teaches concerning Christ being the eternal Son of God, and there being three persons in God. The Father is God, the Son, Jesus Christ, is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. One God in three persons. So, if you're a divine person, with the Father and the Son equal, Then, of course, you must be rich. And that's what is being told us here. Jesus was rich. He was one of the three persons of the Holy Trinity. Another reason why Jesus Christ is rich is this. Because he created the universe. I know There are silly books today that tell us the world came about by evolution. This is what some people think, that millions of years ago, there was a big collapse, and it led to the universe coming out of nothing. That is absolute nonsense, absolute stupidity. You can stand there night and day clapping your hands as often as you like, but I can guarantee you there won't be a new universe will come into being. How did this world begin? The sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, where did it all come from? The answer is in the Bible. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And Jesus Christ was one of the three persons who created the universe. He is a creator, just as the Father is, and just as the Holy Spirit is. So that's how he is so rich. He created the universe. Isn't this what we're told in the Gospel of John? In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God and the Word was God. All things were made by Him. So my beloved friends, and this is why it's so important that you and I should know this God. This is why it is so important to be a real genuine Christian, one who loves God. Because if we don't love God, we won't go to heaven. And if we don't love God, we won't get his help here on earth. If we turn our back on God, we have to be afraid he doesn't turn our back on us. But you see, God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the creators of the universe. And so Jesus is one of the owners of the universe. the universe, the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth that you and I walk on, it all belongs to Jesus Christ and to his father and to the Holy Spirit. So that's why we're told that Jesus Christ was rich. You would think you were rich if you had a big house, wouldn't you? And you would think you were rich if you had a very big motor car, a Rolls Royce. You would think, what a rich man am I. But my dear friends, that's nothing compared to what Jesus has. He has the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, and everything in it, everything growing in it, all the animals, all the trees, everything you can see and everything you can't see. He made it all out of nothing by the word of his power. So you see why it is that this word of God tells us that Jesus Christ is God. Now, who is it that gives Jesus love and respect and honor? Who bow down before Jesus every day and worship him? Well, the answer is the angels do. When the angels see Jesus, they bow down. And that's why we come to church like this, to this beloved, precious congregation, which you love so much and which I love so much. It's because it is in a church like this that Jesus sends his Holy Spirit down in order to teach us the wonderful lessons of his Holy Word. And when we think of Jesus and all that he is and all that he has done for us and how rich he is, then we bow down. And that's how in the prayer meetings, these beloved men who are in front of me here, yes, and others here, when they're called on to pray, they always begin by saying, oh, how we adore thee. Oh, blessed God, how we worship thee and love thee because thou art God over all and blessed forever. And we hope that every one of you will talk like that to God, because that's what the angels do. The angels respect the richness of Jesus Christ Our Lord. Now, something else about Jesus that he is rich, it is this. It is his attributes, his attributes. Now, you may not know what that word means, so let me explain what the word attributes means. It means all the wonderful things which are true about the Lord Jesus Christ. I'll give you a short summary. It's worth learning this by heart. Jesus is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. Any of you could tell me that without my telling you, I know. Infinite, eternal, unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. What a rich person he is. God is infinite, Jesus is infinite. He's bigger than the universe. The sun, moon and stars are just like a little speck of dust compared to the size of Jesus. Infinite, eternal, unchangeable. So that's why he said here to be rich. Now another point I bring to you is this, Jesus is rich because He is the one which is at the center of the Bible. We all know the Bible is God's book. And we ask the question, who is the Bible talking about most of all? Well, the answer is God, but yes, the Son of God also, Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, the ceremonies connected with Israel and the setting up of the tent and tabernacle, and place of worship, it was all pointing forward to when Jesus would be born. And that's how it is, that when Jesus was born, we have four gospels telling us the details. He was born, he grew up, he became a man, he began to preach, and then he was crucified as we had in the reading, and then he went to heaven, to glory. You see, Jesus is right at the very center of the Bible, and the Bible is God's divinely inspired book. I know that you young people are reading the Bible. Oh, I know you are. And you can't read it too much. You can't learn it too much. Because Jesus is right at the center of it. And the more you learn from the Bible, the more you learn about him. Let me go on a bit more. Jesus is rich when you think about the way he describes his powers. Well, there are things he could do you can't do. He could touch a person who was sick like that and immediately they'd be healed. Or if a person was on the ground and fallen down dead, he would just lift them up and they'd stand on their feet. Or if you came to somebody who was blind, they couldn't see, he would just simply touch their face and they could see immediately or hear. Now you can't do that, nor can I do that. How could Jesus do that? The answer is, it's because he's so rich. He had endless power. He could do endless miracles. Young people, here's a good thing to learn by heart. The I am's which Jesus tells us. I am. I am the resurrection and the life. When you get home, learn that and ask your father or mother, what does it mean? I am the resurrection and the life. I am the good shepherd. That's another one. What does that mean? And Jesus tells us, I am the way, the truth, and the life. What does that mean? It means Jesus is the only way to get to heaven. You can't know God unless you believe in him, Jesus, because he is the way, he is the truth, he is the life. And there are other I ams, that's what we call them, the I ams of Jesus. I am, the resurrection and the life and all these wonderful things. So you see, we're taught all these things in the Bible, because it shows us that Jesus Christ is rich and wonderful. All right, well, I mustn't go on with all of those, because I could give you a lot more. And yet, I don't want to be taking you into these things longer than I need to do. So that's the first point then. And that is Jesus Christ here is described as rich. Do you see that in the text? You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, yet he became poor. So I've explained to you what it means that Jesus Christ was rich. And my dearly beloved friends, young ones and old ones, that's why we should love Jesus. That's why we should worship him. That's why every day we should say, oh Lord Jesus, I want to be in heaven with you when I leave this world. I must say that's what I think too. I long to be in heaven. I'm no longer a young man, as you can see by looking at the color of my hair. He's not young anymore, no. But you see, when you get older, and you're a Christian, you begin more and more to want to go to heaven. You want to see Jesus. You want to be with him. You want to adore him and fall at his feet. Here's a question for the old ones among you. You can tell me the answer as you're leaving, and I'll shake your hand. A question I don't know the answer to is this. What should I say to Jesus when I see him for the first time in glory? It won't really be enough to say, thank you very much, will it? It doesn't sound enough to say to somebody who's died on the cross, well, that was very nice of you to do that, thank you. No, no, no. What can you say to him? All I can say is, I would throw myself at his feet and kiss his feet and say, oh, oh, blessed Lord, how kind thou hast been to me. How rich, Lord, is thy love. Right, let's go on then to the second point. The second point is this. It is, 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 be rich. Now, the question I'm looking for now is then, what does it mean he became poor? Forgive me, I've dropped something here. He became poor. And my concern is to look at the question, how did Jesus Christ become poor? The answer is, he allowed wicked people to kill him. That's the answer. How did Jesus become poor? He allowed wicked people to crucify him. That's what we read, wasn't it, in the reading I gave you? They crucified him, they nailed his hands and his feet to the cross, and all those nasty things they did. So, why then did Jesus allow himself to be crucified? The answer is Jesus wanted to be poor so as to help you and me to get to heaven. Jesus Christ made himself poor like this. Although he was God, he took to himself a human nature. Now, you have a human nature. That's what you're doing, sitting there. Now I'm standing here. We all have a human nature, hands and feet and head and body. Now, that's something that Jesus Christ did not have until he was born of the Virgin Mary. And the wonderful thing about Jesus' birth was it was different from your birth and different from everybody else's birth. Let me tell you how. Jesus had an earthly mother whose name was Mary. But Jesus did not have an earthly father. I'll tell you why in a moment. Jesus had an earthly mother, same as you and I do, but he didn't have an earthly father. Who was his father? It was God, the Heavenly Father. And what happened was this, that God, the Heavenly Father, he did a miracle, and the baby Jesus began to grow in the womb of the mother Mary. Now, there's a reason for that. Maybe you know. Let me tell you if you don't know. Jesus had to be born by a miraculous birth from the Father. You see, if Jesus had an ordinary birth, like the one you have had, and I have had, and we had an ordinary father, a normal father, then Jesus would have been born a sinner. Do you realize that? If Jesus had been born as you and I were born, he, like us, would have been born a sinner. The reason is very simple. Everyone who is born of a man of the family of Adam is born a sinner. That's why we have to confess our sins. And if Jesus had been born a sinner, there's something he could never have done. He could never have saved your soul. He could never have forgiven your sin. He could never have taken you to heaven. So God in his love and kindness, he gave to Jesus a body made by God the Father himself in the womb of the woman Mary, the mother Mary. And as soon as Jesus was born, he began to experience all the troubles and all the trials that happen to a person in this life. When he lived in heaven, he never had any trouble. But when he was born as a baby into this world, he began to have a whole lot of troubles. I've got quite a few of them here, let me mention them to you. As soon as our Lord Jesus Christ began to preach, the religious people began to hate him, and they wanted to kill him. As soon as they heard him preach, why was that? It's because his preaching was something so true, they didn't like to hear it. It told them things they didn't like to hear. When Jesus went into the church, well, they call it synagogue. When Jesus went into the building called a synagogue or a church to preach to them, just about the first sermon he gave, Luke's gospel chapter four, he said things which the people hated. And they stood up in their seats like that, and they came forward and rushed him, and they got hold of him, took him outside to the brow of the hill, and they wanted to throw him down to kill him. because they hated what he had to say. He was telling them things they didn't want to hear. You see, that shows what is said here in my text. Though he was rich, yet for your sakes, he became poor. That is to say, he took a human nature, and in his human nature, he experienced suffering and pain and unkindness and hatred, What else did he suffer? Well, we are told like this. We are told that his family went to live in a town called Nazareth. You all know that, Nazareth. But do you realize that Nazareth was a very unpopular place? You know, some places have a good name, don't they? And some have a bad name. Nazareth had a bad name. And if you lived in Nazareth and somebody heard you, what? You live in Nazareth? Oh, keep away from me. I don't want anyone from Nazareth to come near me. You see, that was the attitude they had to Jesus. They didn't like him. What else? Well, think of the miracles that Jesus did. I've mentioned them, haven't I? The miracles. If you were blind, he could give you sight. If you were deaf, You give your hearing. But when Jesus did his miracles, whatever the miracles were, you know, the religious people in his country, the Jews, as we call them, they found a way of saying something nasty to Jesus. Can you guess what they said? Oh, you're doing your miracles, are you? I know the power you're using to do your miracles. It's the power of the devil. Yes, that's what they said. That's what they said. That's what they said. You do your miracles by Beelzebub, they said. Now Beelzebub is the name for the devil, Satan. Now wasn't that nasty? And how cruel, and how unjust, healing a sick person and being accused of doing it by the power of the devil. The devil doesn't do nice things like that, does he? Why did they say that to Jesus? The answer is because Jesus was so holy, he was so pure, he was so truthful, he was so upright, he was so good, that although he was very, very rich, yet they treated him badly. And that's why my text says this, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor. more in the sense that it became unpopular with his fellow Jewish inhabitants. The church leaders hated him. And think of this nasty thing that happened to Jesus. He was tempted by the devil. What a nasty thing that the pure, holy, blessed Son of God should have the devil whispering in his ear, jump down off the top of that building, and I will catch you. You see the wicked thing the devil was saying, and it's only in this wicked world that the devil would be able to say that. And you see, the devil did his best to make life very difficult for the Lord Jesus Christ. Take this thing he suffered. Jesus, we're told, had to suffer difficulty. And on one occasion, he fasted for 40 days. Now, we know what fasting means, don't we? It means we don't take any food. For 40 days, almost six weeks, Jesus took no food at all for 40 days. He was doing that in order to prepare to serve God in this world and to glorify God. But you see, what a discipline that was. He suffered that in order to be a blessing to us. He fasted for 40 days and 40 nights. Another nasty thing that we know about Jesus was this. He became poor. because one of his own disciples betrayed him. I'm sure you remember his name, do you? Judas Iscariot. Judas Iscariot went to Jesus' enemies and got some money so he could do a nasty trick to Jesus and betray him. Can you think of that? betraying his own dear master, who was nothing but kind and good and loving, for 30 pieces of silver. Judas Iscariot did that. No wonder the Bible tells us that though Jesus was rich, he became poor when he was in this world. But let me say what you already are thinking, I'm sure. The most difficult thing of all for Jesus was when they put him to death. And you know, from the reading we had earlier tonight, how they did that. They asked him questions, and they didn't believe his answers, and they nailed through his hands and his feet and put him on a cross, lifted the cross on high, they spat in his face, They said to him, if you're the Son of God, come down off the cross and we'll believe you. But they didn't believe him. So there we are, you see. That's why the Bible tells us about the Lord Jesus Christ. Though he was rich, yet he became poor. He allowed himself to become a man. He never ceased to be God. He was always God. But when he became a man, he was both God and man, one person with two natures. So I quickly move on now and thirdly to say, why did he become a man? Why did he allow himself to be treated so badly as that and to suffer this pain? And the answer is in my text. Let me read the text, verse nine. You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich. In other words, he suffered in order to make you and me rich. This is what it means in the Bible, that God so loves the world that he gave his only begotten Son, and whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Jesus took our human nature in order to suffer for us, and the way in which he mostly suffered was when he was nailed to the cross, crucified, and put to death. Now, I'm sure many of you know this, but this is the most important thing of all in the Bible, the most important lesson that you and I can learn from the Bible. It is Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for our sins. I'm sure many of you know that, but you know, there is nothing more important in all the world than that. doesn't matter how clever you are, doesn't matter how many schools you go to, doesn't matter how many universities you train at, the most important lesson of all the world is this, to know that Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for the sins of men and women and boys and girls like us. So that's what's meant by that in the text. Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might be rich. What then does Jesus do to make us rich? Well, I won't spend long on this, just a few minutes. First, when you believe in Jesus as your Savior, All your sins are forgiven forever, not just for a week, or a year, or a thousand years, or a million years. They're forgiven forever. And it means that when a Christian dies, his soul immediately goes to heaven. Now, I'm not young as you see. I'm in my 80s, 85. And I say that because I know very well what it means to be getting close to death. Death is not a joke. Death is very serious. But I know this as a Christian that because Jesus suffered and died for me, that when I leave this world, by the grace of God, I have every hope of going to glory, to heaven. And there I hope to see Jesus and all the Christians who died before. And I hope to see all you dear ones who will follow me, younger ones, because if we trust in Jesus, then we will most certainly go to glory. So let me come into my close and to say this, Jesus did all that he did to suffer on the cross in order to pay for our sins and take them away. and to give us justification and sanctification and glorification and everlasting happiness with all the saints of God in heaven. So, my beloved friends, whether you be young or old, I want to put this question to you. Are you truly, truly believing in Jesus? I don't simply mean, are you reading about it in the Bible once in a while? That's a good thing, but I mean, with all your heart, are you trusting Jesus as your savior? You don't have to be grown up or old to do that. You can become a real Christian when you're very young, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. As I close, I never forget, a young girl who was in my first congregation when I was in air. And I was a brand new preacher then, very young, and I preached a sermon. And when the sermon was over that evening, this girl about the age of nine, she came up to me, she said, Mr. Roberts, I became a Christian tonight. And she wasn't a joke. It wasn't just something which she was saying. She was truly converted about the age of nine. And as time went on, she showed that by the way she lived. So my dearly beloved, learn these words off by heart about Jesus Christ. Though he was rich, yet for your sakes, he became poor. And you through his riches, might have eternal life and might be rich. That's the text I have. Let's now stand and thank God for it. Eternal God, make every one of us here to be a true child of God. We bless you for Jesus' sufferings. May we love him and serve him. Make thy word to change our lives. We ask all for Jesus' sake. Amen.