THE SABBATH HOUR

Northern Advocate, 29 December 1934, Page 6

THE SABBATH HOUR

• GOOD TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY.” Christmas sermon by Rev. C. Brieriy. at united service in Methodist Church on Christmas morning. Text: “Good tidings of great joy.”— Luke 2.10. While the Christmas story is more or less a commonplace with many today, it yet has a wonderful influence upon many others, especially the young. The wonderful proclamation by the Angel of the Lord on that morning so long ago thrills many today, and as we at this'season hear or read again those deeply significant words, we are stirred by the story of the coming of Jesus. Exactly 120 years ago Samuel Marsden held the first Christian service in New Zealand, in the Bay of Islands—not so many miles from here. He preached this text: "Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy.” Did the Maoris understand or grasp the significance of the message? Not fully, yet it was good tidings of great joy he brought them, and the story of Jesus and Christian work and influence have wrought marvels amongst the natives of this country. There were few, on that morning when Christ was born, who grasped the true meaning and significance of the angel’s words, though they were proclaimed to Jews, descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who should have understood the import of the message, for had not Israel for ages lived in the hope and expectation of the coming of the Messiah?

When we come to look into the records, we find that the wonderful news, the good tidings of great joy, created little impression, for in verse 18 of Luke 2 we read: »"And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.” It may oven have been a nine days’ wonder, but the proclamation and. the fact brought forth no official acknowledgment, no national rejoicing, plainly showing that the Jews were not impressed, that they did not understand the meaning and significance of the wonderful event. Yet it was good tidings of great joy, for by the coming of the Christ God hath wrought wonderful things. Today it is the same. There are many who fail to realise the deep significance of Christ and His saving grace, and the good tidings mean nothing to them. To people in extremity, the good tidings of relief are gladly welcome, as, for instance, in the relief of Lucknow and of Lady-, smith, with what joy the beleagured garrisons heard and saw the approach of their deliverers. But where there is no sense of danger, no realisation of extremity or need, the news that the deliverer is come makes no impression. In some it arouses quite different feelings than were intended, for we know that in Herod it aroused a jealous hatred and he sought to kill the young child. Thie great joy of the good tidings lay in its being to all people. Had it been to Jews only, it would not have been a “great” or complete joy, for joy can never be selfish or narrowed down to a few. George Matheson has some beautiful thoughts on this in “Searchings in the Silence” (You will remember he was the blind Scottish minister). “How could 1 tell my joy to my brother if it were not a universal joy? I can tell my grief to the glad, but not my gladness to the grieving. I dare not spread my banquet at the open window, where tire hungry are passing by. Therefore, oh! my Father, I rejoice that Thou hast sent into my heart a ray of glory which is not alone for me. I rejoice that the light which sparkles in my pool is not my candle, but from the moon. The candle is for me, but the moon is for all. Put out my candle, oh, my Father. Extinguish the joy that is proud of being unshared. And over the darkness let there rise the star —Bathclcm’s star, humanity’s star, the star that shines for one because it shines for all.” We are reminded by those words of the angel, “to all people;” of the word of God to Abraham, that “in thee and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” So Marsden could bring the good tidings to the Maoris, William Carey to India, Robert Morrison to China, etc., that 'all people might hear the good tidings of great joy.

And what is the good tidings? That “Unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour which is Christ the Lord.” It was fitting that the good tidings should be given to the Jews, the descendants of Israel, for to them were given the oracles of God. They held the holy scriptures, and it was of their race and of the royal line of David that the Messiah, was born. Thus God was fulfilling His promises of old. We note that the Saviour was born, not merely sent, as some supernatural being. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace.and truth” (John 1:14). As the hymn expresses it, “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see.” While the Christ was born of the flesh, yet “in Him dwelt all. the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” Man could not redeem man. but God incarnate could, and did, for “in due time, Christ died for the ungodly.” It was a Saviour Who was born. “They shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” God’s plan of salvation is wider. deeper than the people of Israel imagined. It was not that they, Israel, should be delivered from the Roman yoke or from any other oppressor, but that they and “all people” should be saved from sin, reconciled to Himself,

enjoy the life He originally intended all men to enjoy—that of walking with God, in oneness of heart and mind with Him. What good tidings, indeed, to them, to us —a Saviour is born. What good news to those who have been brought to realise their extremity, their need. Oh, how man needs a Saviour, We have learned from bitter experience how unable we are to cope with the temptations of life, how weak we are, how prone to evil. However great our desires and longings for goodness, we know from experience we need some higher power to enable us to be good and do good.

And this Saviour is Christ (Greek for Messiah), the One long promised, Who should bruise the serpent’s head, Who should deliver Israel, Who should save His people from their sins. Ana further, He is Christ the Lord. In the child born at Bethlehem we find God. Modernists deny this, deny the divinity of Christ, though they admit that Christ was the greatest man who ever lived. We accept Him as Lord, and rejoice in Him as our Saviour, and on this Christmas morning again give thanks to God for His gift, and for all the angel’s proclamation means to us, that “Unto us is born a Saviour, which is Christ/the Lord.”

LORD’S PRAYER SERIES

“THY KINGDOM COME.”

(By Silent Peter.)

Dear People, We are all of us in deadly earnest in our desire for the coming of that Kingdom on earth in which no man shall have the power to subjugate his fellows, no woman shall have cause to weep and no child shall go hungry or neglected. However blatantly a man may cry “My own country first and ail others to the rear!” he is usually found to be international in his desire for an casing of the present desperate state of universal' deprivation and unrest. We each of us have our own special little system or method by means of which we devoutly hope and believe the coming of the Kingdom may be hastened. Supporters of the system called Fascism are convinced that Signor Mussolini has solved the problem of the coming of the Kingdom, so far as Italy is concerned. A section of the German people are firmly of the opinion that Herr Hitler and Nazi-ism arc well on the way to proving themselves the saviours of Europe and of its teeming millions. The nearin Russia and the Douglas Credit man in New Zealand look with equal confidence to the adoption of their own particular cult as the only practicable method of the establishment of the Kingdom. Who is to say which of us is wrong and which right? or whether we may every one of us be right, or everyone utterly and irrevocably wrong? One mistake we all make is that we take it for granted that the Kingdom is capable of being embodied in a system or in a series of systems. We all know in our hearts that no system that could be evolved by the mind of man would fulfil the whole purpose of his economic, intellectual and spiritual development. The Kingdom of peace, of well-being and well-doing that we all desire to sec established among men and women cannot be conferred upon a waiting and a longing world by the adoption of any particular system, however apparently near perfection’. Mankind is more ancient than its systems and man has a destiny to fulfil that systems are incapable of envisaging. Systems have their day and are a means to an end. First change man then you may possibly hope for the gradual evolution of the ideal series of systems. The greatest humanitarian Who ever lived taught and proved by His own life that the Kingdom of heaven lies within you and not j within your systems. The same democratic leader taught and proved by His own life that action is an inherent part of prayer. He demonstrated beyond doubt that the Kingdom of heaven is already in actual existence and that it can only be established

universally on earth by each of us tackling our own individual part in helping to make it a reality in the lives of those around us. However small our part may be, it is a man’s size job! Until we face up to it, individually, the mouthing of the prayer “Thy Kingdom come!’’ will continue to be something of a mockery. Yours as ever, SILENT PETER.