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T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
Jesus CKrist—TKe Great Advertisement Address Delivered at St. Paul’s M. E. Church, Atlantic City, as Part of the Sunday Program at the Convention of the Advertising Clubs of the World, June 3rd, 1923. By Joseph A. Richards ■ T HAD been a day of hard going in the wilder ness. The children of Israel were much discour aged because of the way, stone bruises, perhaps,— hot sun and little shade,-—while they followed as Symptoms of the Real Disease And after all, those bitten Israelites recognized the symptoms of the real disease which had attacked them. It was just a case of a fresh breaking out of that old snake bite which happened,—yes, actually and historically hap pened,—back there in the garden, and which has tainted the blood of Adam’s race from that day to this.
the cloud led them. Then said Ben Israel of Judah to his brother of the Tribe of Dan,—“I cannot walk another step; this road is the roughest along which we have traveled these many years, and we do not seem to be getting any nearer to the Land of Promise.’?’1;; So it is written,-^“And the people spake against God and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” And yet, this was almost forty years after the exodus and Jehovah had kept their footwear sound and their garments whole all that time and had rescued them from perils many, many times. “But,” say they, “there is no bread, neither is there any water, and our soul loatheth this light bread.” But bread and flesh morning and evening had been their daily por tion and they drank of the Rock which followed them. Plainly, Jehovah did not enjoy this whining. They were ingrates. “The way was monotonous?”—Yes. “The food, too?” Quite likely. But the good God had provided bountifully and wholesomelys-what were they murmuring about? So the Lord sent—aye, He it was who sent,—• fiery serpents to bite them, and great numbers of the peo ple died. Then when the survivors saw what was happen ing they knew what the matter was. No, it wasn’t the snake bite. They knew the real disease and they came to Moses with the cry,—“We have sinned.” It certainly does take sickness and death and trouble to bring men to know what really is the matter. And this was what God wanted and what He always wants, and it didn’t take Him long to provide a remedy as soon as He heard the confession of the people,—“Take a serpent of brass and lift it upon a pole and tell the bitten people to look at it and every one that looks shall live.” God's Advertisement And it worked. Here, then, was God’s Advertisement of His patent remedy for snake bite. Yes, the serpent on the pole was the advertisement, not the remedy. God him self was the remedy, and every Israelite who believed His advertisement of the brazen serpent just enough to look at it, found the remedy right there. “Believe the adver tisement and you get the goods,” said the Omnipotent One. You don’t like that word “patent.” “Does God patent His remedy for snake bite?” Indeed He does, but it is not because He is selfish but because He is jealous. He can not abide anything earthy getting mixed up with His heav enly medicines, so He patents them and says,—“I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God,”—“He that cometh to God must believe that He is and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” He patents His heavenly medicines to protect them from mundane adulteration. (And, parenthetically, the vast trouble with the world to day is that God’s remedies have been adulterated,—scien tifically, says the learned man,—but with profane and vain babblings, says God. And spurious remedies for human ills are being foisted on the unsuspecting public from many pulpits today. But I want God’s simon pure remedy for snake bite,—don’t you?)
The original snake bite in Eden was self,—selfness,— selfishness,—SIN. Do you hear it hiss,—S-S-S-elf? Do you see it wriggle with that serpentine letter S at the front of it? Isn’t it strange how our language embodies in its very form and in its sibilant sound also, the entire phil osophy of Satan, Sin, Self, Serpent? Yes, even the word Saviour, the advertisement of the remedy for all snake bites, begins with the same hissing, wriggling letter S. For, you remember, Jehovah’s adver tisement looked like the little writhing things that had bitten the people. It was a snake that bit and it was a snake that advertised the cure. And here we are on the very threshold of our theme,— CHRIST,—GOD’S GREAT ADVERTISEMENT. What Is God Selling Today? What is He offering in the market places of the world? What would He have every Christian man and woman of fer to his fellow man? Why, nothing more nor less than His remedy for snake bite. : And how does He expect us to sell that remedy? By means of His marvelous advertisement,—Jesus Christ. Ah, you think that crude, repulsive, unnecessary,—-that expression, “snake bite.” But I tell you that you, like all the rest of mankind, are grievously bitten and that the poison of Self has so numbed most of us that we have no adequate idea of how badly infected we are with the virus of Self. “There is none that doeth good, no, not one,” said Jehovah himself, as He looked down from the heights of purity to the plains of selfishness here on earth. And if any man wants to realize how badly bitten he is, I would advise him to read carefully, a half dozen times, the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians,—the Love chapter, the God chapter, for God is Love and the two names are inter changeable in reading that text. Take one verse of it, for example,||-“Love seeketh not her own.” Don’t you find yourself leagues behind that thought, way out in the dark of self,-—self respect, perhaps you have called it, but as you look at it in the light of God’s love do you not find it stark, ghastly selfishness? No, no, we are all bitten,—we are all selfish,—we are all sinful, and there is no remedy save ope, especially for that stage of the disease which expresses itself in the compla cent thought that “We are all in the same boat, all doing the best we can, all likely to be leniently judged at life’s close, if we do this or that, and refrain from doing this or that.” A desperate condition is that, and requiring the one sovereign remedy for snake bite. And as for the world, can you not see it in every coun try, in every race and tribe,—bitten with wriggling, writh ing, squirming selfishness. Is There Any National Salvation? Is there any peace sc long as every race,-—now so closely knit to every other by the results of scientific discovery,—
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