*Title:* Are You Poor? — Pastor Kyle Baldwin, July 18, 2026

Jesus began in both places the same way: with the poor. Announcing His ministry in the Nazareth synagogue, He read Isaiah’s words — “he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor” (Luke 4:18) — and when He opened the Sermon on the Mount, His first blessing fell on “the poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3). In this sermon, Pastor Kyle Baldwin explains what that poverty is: drawing on Ellen White, he describes people who feel their want of the grace of Christ, who know they cannot face temptation in their own strength — and to whom Christ says, blessed are you, because those who feel their poverty may be made rich. Recognizing our spiritual poverty, he argues, is not only the starting point of salvation; it is the starting point of everything.

The temptation is to leave that recognition back at conversion. We celebrate testimonies of outward change, Pastor Baldwin says, but we are slower to celebrate the believer — or the elder on the platform — who keeps returning sorrowfully to the foot of the cross; we may even wonder what secret sin drives their prayers. The Bible’s intercessors prayed the other way: Solomon asked God to forgive a confessing people (1 Kings 8:35–36), Daniel confessed his nation’s rebellion as his own (Daniel 9), and in Jesus’ parable it was the publican — not the self-trusting Pharisee — who went down to his house justified, because he knew his need and cried, “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:9–14). We brush our sins off as “not a salvation issue,” compare ourselves favorably with the person in the next pew, and reduce our spiritual battles to surface habits, while the pride at the root goes unconfessed. Pastor Baldwin aimed the point at everyone in the room, himself included: you need to hear this; I need to hear this; we all need to hear this.

The sermon’s sharpest word is about order: you will not receive the latter rain unless you have first received the former rain. Victory over sin begins with acknowledging, right now, our complete need of God’s grace — and the evidence of the former rain is a life on its knees, aware of its poverty and desperately seeking forgiveness. Paul never graduated from that posture: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief” (1 Timothy 1:15). Pastor Baldwin closes with his father’s childhood lesson in Memphis — we are weaker than the people who lived in biblical times, the weakest who have ever lived — and the discovery that pierced him then and answers us now: where sin abounds, grace much more abounds. We are spiritually poor, but He is rich, and in Jesus Christ we have everything we will ever need. The invitation is simple: bow your head in humility, and step forward in faith.

*Key texts:* Luke 4:18; Matthew 5:3; Luke 6:20; Luke 18:9–14; 1 Timothy 1:15–16 · *Also referenced:* 1 Kings 8:35–36; Daniel 9:19; Luke 16:10; Romans 5:20; Ellen G. White on the poor in spirit and on uniting our will to God’s will; James Montgomery Boice, *The Parables of Jesus*

*Watch:* https://youtu.be/MbrSwX2okgU · *Listen:* https://cloud-1de12d.becdn.net/media/original/71f6923aea223498d9422540df92346a.mp3