Zephaniah 3:12

I will leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, and they shall trust in the name of the Lord.

The rich poverty

I. God’s dealings with His poor Church when He comes to visit the world. “I will leave in the midst of thee.” God will have some in the worst time. This is an article of our faith. We believe in the “holy Catholic Church.” The world should not stand were it not for a company in the world that are His. Though God’s people be but a few, yet hath He a special care of them. Sometimes, indeed, it seems otherwise. God’s children are taken away in common judgments. But He deals with HIS children as becometh His infinite wisdom, and so that they shall find most comfort in the hardest times.

II. The state and condition of these people. “An afflicted and poor people.” This is for the most part the state of God’s children and Church in the world. We must not say it is a general rule. Reasons are--

1. It is fit that the body should be conformable to the head.

2. By reason of the remainder of our corruptions it is needful.

God sanctifies outward affliction and poverty, to help inward poverty of spirit. It takes away the fuel that feeds pride. And it has a power to bring us to God. Inward and spiritual poverty is not mere want of grace. There is a poverty of spirit before we are in a state of grace, and after. Where this con Diction and poverty is, a man sees an emptiness and vanity in all things in the world whatsoever, but in Christ. There is a desire for the grace and favour of God above all things. A wondrous earnestness after pardon and mercy, and after grace It is always joined with a wondrous abasing of self. There is a continual frame and disposition of soul which Is a poverty of spirit that accompanies God’s children all the days of their life. In justification and in sanctification there must be poverty of spirit.

III. The carriage of these poor and afflicted people. Naturally every man will have a trust in himself, or out of himself. God is the trust of the poor man. What he wants in himself he has in God. Learn, then, to know God: in His special attributes, and in His promises. (R. Sibbes.)

The condition and character of the people of God

I. The condition of God’s people in this world. “An afflicted and poor people.” “A remnant.” Though trouble, vanity, and vexation of spirit attend upon believers as the children of this world, yet there are trials, difficulties, and woes of a far more grievous nature, peculiar to them as the people of God. Sin is the greatest of the great troubles of the righteous. Then there is what Scripture calls, “the hiding of God’s countenance.” They are “poor” in the sense of being “poor in spirit.” And the true Church of Christ has ever been a protesting, minority.

II. Their hope and character. Their hope is “a good hope.” “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it and is safe.” As to their character, God calls them to holiness, to purity, to love, to peace. The most devoted Christian cannot hope to be entirely free from sin until “mortality, is swallowed up of life.” But the believer does not love sin, or anew it to reign over him.

III. Their privileges.

1. Their wants shall he supplied.

2. They shall be free from terror and danger. (C. Arthur Maginn, M. A.)

God’s people afflicted and poor

The Book of Providence is confessedly a difficult book. Perhaps there are few more mysterious things in it than the deep trials of the family of God.

I. The Lord has a people. They are the Lord’s witnesses. Yet they are but a remnant. A remnant according to the election of grace.

II. The circumstances of his people. “Afflicted and poor.” There is not an evil in life from which they are exempt. They have afflictions common to men, and afflictions peculiar to themselves. Oftentimes they are heavy afflictions. Many of God’s people are literally poor, and certainly they are poor in the sense of being humble.

III. WHAT ARE THE BLESSINGS OF THESE CIRCUMSTANCES? Affliction is the means of bringing them to think. And it is the means of drawing out the sympathies of the saints of God. (J. Harington Evans, M. A.)