767
T H E
K I N G ’ S
B U S I N E S S
December 1924
Where God and Man Meet— A Christmas Message By Dr. W. B. Hinson, Pastor East Side Baptist Church, Portland, Oregon “Bet us go now even to Bethlehem” Duke 2:15 the first place let us go to Bethlehem— that we lay find— God! such value to God that He did not deem it unwise to give His own Son to die for man.
Now usé your logic a moment. If man could only be saved by the coming, and the dying, and the rising again of the Son of God, how greatly must that man have sinned! And of what turpitude must his wrong-doing consist! So let us go to Bethlehem that we may find man! * * * * Let Us Go to Bethlehem that We May Find God and Man! For you, know the story of which that Bethlehem scene is on ly, the commencing chapter—you know how Jesus grew up; how He played the games with other lads; how He thought the long, long thoughts of childhood; how he toiled at the carpenter’s bench among the fragrant shav ings; how He went out into public life, three years of which men put up with and then murdered Him—you know the story. Well, the story that began down there when God and man came together in that incarnation is the story that had its last chapter, so far as that earthly ministry was con cerned, when on the Cross Jesus took hold of man and God and brought the two together. Do you know the story of the lad who had angered his father? The father said: “ You ge^ out of this house and nevermore darken its door.” And the son said: “ I will do it,” and he went out. He wrote to his mother. The mother grew strangely ill, and the man of medicine said that he could not understand what was the matter with her. She had what I fear a good many mothers in this land have, an aching and breaking heart. And one day the doctor said he was not coming back, because he could do her no good. She heard it, and calling to her husband said: “ Will you do one thing for me?” And he said: “ I will.” She said: “Write and tell the boy to come home.” He re plied: “ I cannot.” Then she said: “ Bring me a pencil and a piece of paper,” which he did. And she asked to be propped up that she might write; and she wrote: “ My boy, comp home; I am dying.— Your mother.” In a far-off city he received that note with its scrawling writing, and hurried home. He arrived after dark; but how familiar was the creak of the old garden gate, and what emotions were his as he walked the path between the flower beds, where he had often seen his mother? He opened the door and went in, and on up the stairs, and entered his mother’s room. There stood the father by the side of the dying woman, and with the old animosity still in his heart, the boy deliberately walked round to the other side of the bed and kept the mother between himself and his father. I have often thought of the mystery that enables people to live until they attain something they desire. That woman had kept on living, in spite of the fact that she was dying, until she saw the boy; but she had very little strength and could say but little. She looked her greeting. And then (Continued on page 806)
Now the world by wisdom has never found out lod. The wisest of all the nations of antiquity put up in the city of Athens an altar which the Apostle' Paul stopped to look at one* day. And in a speech he made in that same place a few hours afterward he said: “ As I passed by, I beheld an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.” The wisest people of antiquity could not find out God, and they erected the altar to the unknown one who might, for aught they knew, be the God of all the gods. It was no new thought that came to me today, yet it was a thought I prized very much and have been helped by it, that a God who could come down and become a baby in a stable, and sleep in a manger— disturbed for aught I know by the lowing of the oxen and the noises incident to so public a place— a God who could do that is after all the kind of God who makes a very tender and very urgent appeal to my squl. I know that “ great is the mystery of godliness 11 — God manifest in the flesh” in a Bethlehem stable; but I also know that great is the mercy of that manifestation of God. I once had the privilege of talking to a man who knew so much that it seemed to me he could never possibly know any more; but when I told him this story, of which he was ignorant-^—the story of Christ the God-man, the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace— the man’s imagination was seized and his heart was touched, and he who had been known for forty years as a skeptic shed tears and thanked me for telling him the story and praying that it might do him good. I have wished a thousand times in my life that when I was only a boy some one had told me of this Bethlehem God—,-this God in Christtc^but no one ever did; and there fore I grew up ignorant of the sublime music, the wonderful imagery, and the marvelous Christ of the Gospel. And you know, I go halting all my days'because I lacked that sort of instruction, which I hope you are giving to your children, else you are among their worst enemies. Let us go to Bethlehem to find God! * * * * But Also Let Us Go to Bethlehem to Find Man Oh, how my soul revolts when I hear the disparagers of man making their fling at men and women! I suddenly recall a man whom I had in my first church, and his fav orite introduction when he got up to speak was, “ Man is half beast and half devil.” And I hushed him one night by telling him to speak for himself; that I did not thank him for saying I was half beast and half devil, for it was a lie! Oh no! If you go to Bethlehem and see God incar nated in a human form, you will know there is something in man that is neither beast nor devil; there is something of
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