“ God with Us.” God has built a bridge that reaches from Himself to us that He might bring us to Himself. “ God with us” is also “ God for us,” and “ If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Roman 8:31). The substance of God’s joy on our part is a mingling of faith, the outpouring of our love, and the obedience of our lives in service. The Sharers of the Joy The sharers of the joy were the wise men who traveled the long road to the feet of Jesus and the shepherds who went the short road. They came; they gave themselves and their gifts; they worshiped and they returned the wise men another way because they were changed men, the shepherds to glorify and praise God and become the first tel lers of the “Joy.” Luke speaks of those who receive the Word with joy (Luke 15:7,10). They have Christ’s joy ful filled in themselves (John 17:13). They too finished their course with joy (Acts 20:24). Yet there are many spurning God’s offer of His joy in the Saviour today. F. W. Boreham tells of going to stay with some friends when his parents went for a holiday in Wales. It was a large house and he poked about in the different rooms seeing all there was to be seen. But one room was forbidden. Its door was always closed. Nobody ever entered the room but his hostess. His curiosity was piqued. He used to gaze wonderingly at the closed door. One day, as he perched at the foot of a couch in the room opposite, the mysterious door opened softly and the mother of the household came out. She caught sight of him in his rosy good health and broke down. The secret of that closed room was a mentally afflict ed son. The mother rushed to the couch against which he was leaning and wept as though her heart would break. “ Oh, Sonny,” she moaned, in an agony of grief, “ Sonny, Sonny, Sonny! I’ve fed you and nursed you and cared for you and loved you all those years, and you haven’t even known me!” Never in all those years was there one look of recognition, never a smile, never a word, never an understanding touch or caress. That was her heartbreak. And it is God’s! He has sent His Son! He has bared His heart and men go their own way blandly saying they do not need a Saviour! How can hearts be so hard against Him who has loved them so? To an open house in the evening, Home shall men come, To an older place than Eden, And a taller town than Rome. To the end of the way of the wandering star, To the things that cannot be and that are, To the place where God was homeless, And all men are at home. T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
[B] n [H a r t h [ p ] e a c e [ g ] o d d [w] i l l [H o w a r d [M] e n
will of God, even then we cannot pos sess absolutely. When we say, “ This is my wife, my child, my house, my job, and no one, no thing must take them away,” we are living life apart from God. We cannot know His joy and will rest in fear because sooner or later something will touch and take that which we cherish. God’s joy can operate in our lives only when everyone and everything we cherish we hold in trust for Him, to be yielded to Him when He calls for it. Then even if happiness is shattered, joy rises within, fed by underground rivers of His joy. A certain king instructed his gardener to plant six trees and to place statues beneath each of them representing Pros perity, Victory, Strength, Duty, Beauty and Joy. These trees were also to rep resent the king in his reign for the good of his people. . The gardener complied with the com mand of the king and planted the trees in fulfillment of his orders. On the com pletion of the gardener’s task, the king proceeded to inspect the trees. Coming to the one representing “Joy” he said, “ Surely I thought you would typify Joy by some flowering plant like the tulip or magnolia; how can the stately and seri ous palm represent Joy?” “ Those trees,” said the gardener, “get their happiness from manifest and open success. They live in merry forests or orchards, with hosts of friends as comrades; but I found this palm tree fresh and green and happy all alone in a sandy waste. Its roots had found the rivulet issuing from some hidden spring creeping from its unseen source far below the earth’s surface. Then, thought I, there is the true representa tion of Joy. The highest joy has both a hidden fountain and a concealed rivulet and a fountain unseen by men, and a source they cannot comprehend.” The Baby is lying in the manger. The poets of the ages have composed carols and alleluia choruses in His honor. Numberless painters have pictured Him and we see the manger through the rose-tinted romantic glasses which the centuries have put on our eyes. But all this is fictitious. The true picture is of a reeking stable, a poor village woman, a tiny helpless baby like yours or mine. The shepherds were given a twofold sign, “wrapped in swaddling clothes,” and “ lying in a manger.” Unless covered, He would freeze; unless fed, He would die. He was utterly helpless and dependent and a halo is not mentioned. The swaddling clothes predict His life, “He saved Page Eighteen
others; himself he cannot save” (Matt. 27:42). This Baby also was homeless like trudging millions today. “ There was no room for them in the inn.” As a man He was forced to say, “ The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head” (Matt. 8:20). The Source of Joy: "I Bring Y ou " There is only one source of joy. The angel said to the shepherds, “ I bring you.” The wise men rejoiced with ex ceeding joy when they saw the star because they knew the star would lead them to the Infant King. Joy can only be born into our hearts as it is heaven sent. “ These things have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full” (John 15:11). That was spoken on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane to Christ’s disciples. Joy does not come from what we have but from what we are, not from outward possessions but inward participation. It is vain to seek joy except by fol lowing the path of the wise men and the shepherds. Prince von Bismarck, the iron-fisted maker of modern Ger many, famous, wealthy, honored, said: “ During my whole life I have not had twenty-four hours of happiness.” “ Thou wilt shew me the path of life,” said the Psalmist; “ in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Psa. 16:11). The Substance of God's Joy: "G ood Tidings" The substance of the joy of God which came down at Christmas is the “good tidings,” good news of salvation. “ For unto you is born a Saviour.” As T. S. Eliot has said, “ Then He came, at a predetermined moment in time and of time. A moment, not out of time, but in time, in what we call history: transecting, bisecting the world of time, a moment in time but not like a mo ment of time. A moment in time but time was made through that moment; for without the meaning there is no time, and that moment of time gave the meaning.” Martin Niemoeller declared to six listeners in a concentration camp one Christmas Eve, that man-made religions require that human beings set out for a distant deity to whom they must laboriously climb. But here at the manger, God comes down to us and cares for us. His Name is Emmanuel—
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