God’s Identification with the Poor by Amy Sherman

Taken from Amy Sherman’s devotional, Sharing God’s Heart for the Poor

He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Marker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God. –PROVERBS 14:31

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. –PSALM 68:5

These two verses teach us two important truths about God. First, He considers injury done to the poor a personal affront, and kindness done to the needy as personal service. That’s the point of Proverbs 14:31 (and of Proverbs 17:5 and Proverbs 19:17). Jesus explains the same truth in the parable of the sheep and the goats in Mathew 25. There, He commends the righteous who “saw him hungry and gave him something to eat, and saw him thirsty and gave him something to drink.” What the righteous did to “the least of these,” they did unto Christ. What the unrighteous failed to do to the least of these, Jesus says, they failed to do to Him.

Second, God often chooses to identify Himself with his loving saving actions on behalf of the poor. God holds numerous titles: Jehovah – Shalom (God our peace), the Almighty, the Sovereign Lord, the Creator, Jehovah – Jireh (God our provider), and more. But repeatedly throughout the Psalms, we see that God also wants to be known for the way He loves the needy. Psalms 68:5 teaches that God titles Himself, “father to the fatherless, and defender of widows.” Similarly, in Psalm 9:9, we see God named as “a refuge to the oppressed.” In Psalm 12:5, God declares, “Because of the oppression of the weal and the groaning of the needy, I will now arise. I will protect them from those who malign them.” He is described in Psalm 35:10 as the One who “rescues the poor who rob from those too strong for them, the poor and needy from those who rob them;” in Psalm 103:6 as One who “works righteousness and justice and for all the oppressed;” and in Psalm 146:7-9 as the One who watches over the needy, gives food to the hungry, lifts up those bowed down, and considers the ways of the fatherless, the alien, and the widow. And Psalm 72, which speaks of Jesus the King, describes Him similarly: “He will defend the afflicted among the people, and save the children of the needy; he will crush the oppressor. For he will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help. He will take pity on the weak and needy and save the needy form death. He will rescue them from oppression and violence, for precious is their blood in his sight.”

God requires us to worship Him as He describes Himself. We don’t have the right to construct our own picture of Him. We must take Him as He is. And He clearly wants us to know that a central, irreducible component of His self-identity is His love for the poor.

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For further thought…

How could your worship of God be enriched by meditating on His character as “a father to the fatherless and defender of widows?” what new insights do you gain about God from such reflections?