MEDITATION AT THE END OF THE NEWLY BEGUN YEAR

Thus wrote one of our deceased ministers in a New Year’s Eve sermon. And, indeed, that is what it really is. Whenever we start a new year it appears like a long time to us. Especially when we are young, a year of twelve months appears like a long time, so that we wonder how we are going to get to the end. In general, to young people, time does not pass fast enough. Later that becomes different. But it does not take long and then we say, “Has half of a year passed already; is the summer passed already, is this the last month already?” Time flies as it were with eagles’ wings.

Of course, much may happen in one year. Our business, our position which had soared so high, may fail in a short time. Things may happen which never came to our mind and which may be indirectly the cause that there was such a decline. Also in our family and personal life such far reaching events may take place. We do not know what may happen from one day to the next, yea, from one moment to the other. What terrible accidents may happen to us and into how deep mourning we may be plunged suddenly! How many people there are over the length and breadth of the earth that often remark, “This and that year we shall not easily forget.” Especially in oppressive circumstances and in heavy trials it may appear to us that there shall be no end to this year. God foils our calculations so often.

The apostle James writes in chapter 4: “Go to now, ye that say ’today or tomorrow we will go into such a city and continue there a year and buy and sell and get gain.’ Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”

When during special calamities and disasters we are preserved by God’s hand, the year flies away and then we are at the end of it before we realize it. Life and the cares of this time occupy our thoughts to such an extent that hardly a moment is left to stop and consider how transient this life is. At times we would say, was there ever a time that there was such a restlessness in the hearts of young and old, and that everything is so hurried, that there is no more time to consider that after this time there shall be no time. And yet how necessary it is to consider our ways calmly. By and by another year will be behind us in which the Lord has shown that He has no pleasure in our death, nor in our ruin and destruction.

How many lives have been cut off over the entire world and also in our country. Many have, due to old age, weakness and sickness, exchanged time for eternity. What a great number had no sick bed but who by a heart attack or by an accident, were suddenly summoned to appear before the Judge of heaven and earth.

Probably, also among our relatives, among our friends, or in our own family, the angel of death entered to cut off the thread of life. We remember so many of our members, here and there, who during the past year had to part with their beloved relations. May the Lord strengthen and sustain them and sanctify it to their heart unto an eternal blessing.

But we have still been spared and for us the prayer, “Lord, let it alone this year also,” Luke 13, has been answered. The door of mercy is not yet shut. It is still the acceptable time, the day of salvation.

What abundant reasons there are to bow down in the dust before that God in Whose hands our life is, and Whose are all our ways.

God has not yet removed His Word from us, but still left it with us. It is that Word which can make us wise unto salvation. We have lived under the proclamation of law and gospel. We have been told about the weal and the woe. Christ was preached as the only foundation for salvation. Blessing and curse, life and death has been preached to us.

How much labor of love God has spent upon us, and how many callings came to us. The Lord could also say to us, “What could have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it?”

But where is the fruit and what has been our response? Day by day God has loaded us with His blessings. God has granted us life and favor, and His visitation has preserved our spirit. Truly they were all undeserved blessings wherewith the Lord surrounded us. From God’s side there were favors, but on our side was nothing but sin, guilt, shortcomings, ingratitude, and unfruitfulness as we read in Nehemiah 9:33, “Thou hast done right but we have done wickedly,” and may that also be the confession of our heart and life.

How it becomes us that at the end of this year, which by and by will belong to the past, to bow down in the dust before that High God in Whose hand our life is and Whose are all our ways; that God Who has loaded us with His benefits. But a brutish man knoweth not, neither doth a fool understand this. By nature, man just lives on. He is born as a wild ass’s colt, and we live on as creatures that have a right to His blessings.

Man is willing to agree and does not contradict that we have demerited everything, but the acknowledgment of it is so cold and unfeeling.

The Lord Himself tells us in His Word, “The ox knoweth his owner and the ass his master’s crib, but Israel doth not know; my people doth not consider,” Isaiah 1:3. We are worse than an animal, and what a great benefit it is when with Asaph, in truth, we become as a beast before God. Then we become truly upright. Then we acknowledge that only when we are wrought upon by God’s Spirit does it touch the heart.

And now I do not write this to hide behind it or to excuse ourselves. No, far from it. It is all our own fault. God has created us good and after His image. As the jewel of God’s creation, we were adorned with knowledge, righteousness and holiness.

We have destroyed that image of God and deprived ourselves of all those treasures wherewith God had endowed us. In our fall, we even lost attentiveness. We have no longer an eye nor a heart for the mercies of God. We are blind for our blindness and dead for our state of death. We just go on in a vain show, and we step from one year into another without considering what it all signifies.

Our state of death cannot be expressed. We have lost God, lost His image, lost His glory, yea we have lost everything, and we have become so very miserable that we have no longer an idea concerning the things of eternity. How should the thought take hold of man that he has lived another year, is a year closer to eternity and the final judgment where the Lord shall demand an accounting of our stewardship. Old year’s day and evening remind us that the end of all things is at hand and that by and by we shall be placed before that great judgment seat where we shall be asked what we have done with all the blessings and callings.

We have received another year’s time to consider the things that belong to our eternal peace, and that year shall not return.

It is impossible to convert ourselves, but let us bear in mind that God did not create us unconverted. God has created us good and after His likeness with the power and ability to live well-pleasing before Him, and to walk in His ways. And even though we have fallen ever so deep, God demands the return of His image. Let us never forget that. Besides, a way has been opened in Christ to escape that punishment and be again received into favor. God converts unconverted people. The trumpet of the gospel is still heard among you. God has proclaimed and called to us, “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon,” Isaiah 55:6,7, and that only in and through Christ Who in the state of His deep humiliation satisfied God’s justice. Only in His precious mediatorial blood is the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His mercy. The word of salvation is sent to us, and the Lord asks in His Word, “What could have been done more to My vineyeard that I have not done in it?” There is nothing left for us to excuse and exonerate ourselves.

On the contrary, we must consider that by virtue of creation and gospel, God has made Himself free from us. For that reason it is written that those that have known the way, and have not walked therein, shall be beaten with many stripes. O how just shall that just judgment of God be in the great day of judgment.

Man confirms with his life that he will have nothing to do with God and that he only desires to go to hell. Perhaps it sounds harsh to some people, but it is the honest truth.

When during this past year we were concerned about getting ahead in this world, to add houses to houses, and fields to fields, then we had the time. We sacrificed everything for that. There was time to pursue the things of the world, such as money and property, yea we even sacrificed our night’s rest to acquire that which perishes.

Time was set aside to go on vacation. How much we sacrifice to please the flesh. The world must be foliowed in everything, but alas, there is no care nor concern to become reconciled and at peace with God. Why no time for our immortal souls and for the eternal interests? Ah, the only answer that I can give to that is, “No time because there is no desire and no need.” When we actually realize it, then we must say, our life has been trifled away and spent uselessly. In Paradise we bade farewell to God, never to return to God. With all our religion, piety and self-righteousness, we are nothing but enemies of God. We hate God and we desire not the knowledge of His ways. We realize that in the world there is neither fulfillment nor satisfaction, but still man continues in his own work to seek happiness where it can never be found.

By nature, man hardens his heart under all the blessings and callings, and refuses to blush with shame and to ask after God his Maker, Who gives psalms in the night. By and by the day of grace will be past and then it is too late, forever too late. In the hour of death the longsuffering of God will have an end. And then, and then, we will curse the day that we were born, and curse the time that the gospel sounded in our ears; but also curse ourselves — and continue to curse ourselves forever and forever. God will be cursed because of the pain and sorrow there where the worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.

O, if that were realized, then man would not arrange for a sociable time on New Year’s Eve; then there would be no drinking nor would all kinds of foolishness be committed.

Alas, many so-called church people take part in that, and even many who consider themselves to be converted people. But man only reveals what he is. If the seriousness of life were realized, and the emptiness of everything here below, and the importance of eternity were felt, then there would be need for something else. Then there would be cries which could be heard outside, “O God, I am still unconverted, still unreconciled, still unsaved, still lost.” Then it would be a fleeing from chamber to chamber, then a cry for help would go up to heaven, that it might please the Lord to show mercy according to the riches of His grace in Christ Jesus. Then we would not lay our head down so easily to sleep on New Year’s Eve.

David sang in Psalter 140:2:
“My transgressions I confess,
Grief and guilt my soul oppress,
I have sinned against Thy grace,
And provoked Thee to Thy face.
I confess Thy judgment just,
Speechless I Thy mercy trust.”

O, would that by and by the bells of eternity would begin to toll in our heart, in our home, in the church and in the world. The judgment of hardening has advanced so far already that there is hardly any more notion of death and eternity. It is only sports and games, eating and drinking, having fun, and sinking deeper and deeper into the world and sin while extinguishing and killing all thoughts of eternity. With all the religion that exists, it is practically nothing but a returning to paganism, and a ripening for the approaching judgment of God. O that here and there where the truth is still in the church, we may once more hear the sounding again of the mountains.

The Lord has departed far, also from the instituted ordinances. How great is the unfruitfulness to be observed everywhere. We cannot accuse God of injustice, but our sins are the cause that the Lord has so far departed from us. We banish God with our sins of heart and home and nation, church and state.

May these poor lines be a blessing to this one or that one. May it become eternity for us while we are still alive. God’s arm is not yet shortened, and His power is not diminished. He speaks and it is, He commands and it stands fast. It is God who beats the rocks to pieces. There is nothing too wonderful for Him. His omnipotence is boundless, and His mercy endureth forever. God’s Spirit works powerfully and irresistibly. He is able to change a lion into a lamb; an enemy into a friend; an adversary into a supporter; a hater into a lover. He is the Mighty God, “I will, and they shall.” There is no one too old, no one too young, no one too guilty or too wicked. There is nothing too wonderful for the Lord; and if there is an effectual calling within, a powerful, irresistible calling, then the immediate effect shall be that he begins to cry to God. When it becomes Old Year for us, then God gives us to look back, but also to look forward.

Behind us everything is dark and gloomy, and forward, according to God’s righteous judgment, separation from God forever.

But in that distress a cry to God is born, a crying out of the depths; a confession of our sins in truth and uprightness; a sorrow for our sins as an affront to the Supreme Majesty of God. Then it becomes, “If Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquity, O Lord who shall stand?” Psalm 130. And that crying which God Himself has wrought shall not remain unanswered: “Call unto Me and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things which thou knewest not,” Jer. 33:3. Then it becomes the year of God’s good pleasure and the year of God’s good pleasure is followed by the year of release. Then we shall remain no stranger of the way it came up in God’s heart from eternity to save and to restore His church, while maintaining and glorifying His infinite Divine virtues. We shall remain no stranger of God’s sovereign good pleasure toward men; no stranger to the labor of Christ as declared in Isaiah 63:4, “For the day of vengeance is in Mine heart, and the year of My redeemed is come,” remain no stranger to the ministration of the Spirit Who quickens a sinner, convinces and uncovers him so that through Him Christ would be glorified in their hearts, to the praise of His unsearchable love and grace; to the preservation and salvation of the chief of sinners.

O, may at the end of this year, God bring many to the end with themselves; to the end of the law, in order that they may learn to know Christ Who is the end of the law unto salvation for all that believe. Then it shall be, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away, behold all things are become new,” II Cor. 5:17.

If death comes, then it shall be evident that they have not lived in vain. The Lord tells us in His Word: “This people have I formed for myself; they shall show forth My praise,” Isaiah 43:21.

Through sin in Paradise, we have missed our aim, but through regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, we receive back the purpose for which God has called us, namely for His glory and glorification. However, if we belong to that favored people, and are included in that covenant of grace, then something shall also be learned of, “Through Thee alone, because of Thine eternal good pleasure.” But we have experienced each day, each week, each month, each year which has flown by, that if it depended on us, then it would be a lost cause. No fruit from us henceforward forever. Let all those people testify of that God Who has loved His people freely. It was not because there was something in those people or would proceed from them. O no, because that is so different. We read in Jeremiah 32:30, “For the children of Israel and the children of Judah have only done evil before Me from their youth.”

Therefore that wonder becomes so great. It becomes such a great wonder that “the Creator of the ends of the earth fainteth not, neither is weary.” The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.

And Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.

May at the end of the newly begun year, God bring us to the end with self. Then we shall learn that Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. Then we shall never want to go back again to the beginning, for it is nothing but disappointment with self. But then at times there shall be joy that there will be an end to this present dispensation. It shall not be each day, nor each year, but it shall take place when faith is in exercise. “And the Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come’. And let him that heareth say, ‘Come’. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

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