NEW YEAR’S MESSAGE TO THE YOUNG

My Dear Young Friends,

We pray that the Lord would bless you and keep you in this new year and that by His grace you would be enabled to give good heed to the injunction, “Let not thine heart envy sinners; but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long” (Proverbs xxiii: 17). This is very necessary advice, for young people are especially prone to be envious of those who have no restraint laid upon them in their pursuit of worldly and sinful pleasures. This feeling of envy shows itself at a very early age and sad to say often ripens to maturity on “coming of age,” when there is a breaking out into all manner of evil. This is the choosing of the broad way, spoken of in Scripture, that leads to destruction. The present lot of the sinner seems so attractive; his enjoyments are many, the circle of his friends increases, his sorrows, it may well be, are few, and the desires of the heart are only to be attained by joining this company. But “let not thine heart envy sinners.” Why? We find the answer in the next verse of this chapter: “For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall be cut off.”

Those who look to the future and see the end of the wicked have no reason to envy. There is a day of reckoning; there is a harvest to be reaped. Never-ending woe is to be the portion of the ungodly; the reward of unrighteousness is eternal death. On the other hand, the expectation of the people of God is not to be disappointed. Their reward shall be great. They shall receive joy and gladness and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

At the beginning of another year will you not pause for a little and consider matters? Almost all, if not all, who will read this letter, profess to believe the Bible, and many of you have also engaged to be the Lord’s by baptism. You must therefore be agreed on many matters and you will know the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith, Ruin by the Fall, Redemption by Christ, Regeneration by the Holy Spirit, the everlasting blessedness of the ransomed of the Lord and the eternal misery of the lost in hell for ever. These things being so, you must agree that it is an evil and a bitter thing to sin against God. The seeming prosperity of sinners is very, very short-lived, the apparent attractiveness of sin is a delusion, and its true nature is to bite like a serpent and sting like an adder. “Let not thine heart envy sinners.” Plainly, you have no reason to do so.

The latter part of the verse gives us positive advice, “Be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long.” We read in another part of the Bible that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. We cannot reverence and stand in awe of God unless enlightened in our minds by the Holy Spirit, and brought to know the Lord Jesus Christ as our Saviour, the only mediator between God and men. This then is our greatest need—”to know Thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent: for this is life eternal.” The natural consequence of fearing the Lord is a departing from evil, a distrust of self, a desire to follow the Lord and to acknowledge Him in our lives, and a seeking to know more and more of Him and of those things which are unseen and eternal. The ordinances of God’s own appointment, the Word, sacraments and prayer will be made use of and greatly prized as means of grace and, if we are rightly exercised, there will be a conformity to the divine will evidenced and men will take note of us that we have been with Jesus.

Hear the testimony of an aged saint of a bygone age, “I must own, to His praise, that He has helped me to draw water out of these wells of salvation with great joy; and has frequently satisfied me ‘with the fatness of His house, even of His holy place.’ He has made all His garments, His ordinances, smell to me of aloes, myrrh, and cassia; and to this day, I am joyful, when it is said, ‘Let us go up to the house of the Lord.’ And while I live I will ever pray for the peace of Jerusalem. ‘For my friends and brethren’s sake,’ for my own sake and for the sake of posterity, I will ever seek her good...”

“Let not thine heart envy sinners; but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long.”

— Young People’s Magazine

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