NEW YEAR’S MEDITATION

For twelve months we spoke and wrote about the year 1968, but that year now belongs to the past. From now on we speak and write about the year 1969. Many questions arise to which we are absolutely unable to give any answers. In every field and in every respect it is again an unknown future we face. This is true as far as our personal life is concerned, but also in regard to our family, our society, the church we belong to, and the country in which we live.

More than ever we are reminded that we are “but of yesterday, and know nothing.” Nevertheless, there are many things that we do know. God has given us His Word, and that tells us that man has been created in the image of God and in His likeness; that we have robbed ourselves of all those treasures and gifts by our own deliberate disobedience; that we must be born again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Chhrist from the dead; that we cannot see God without sanctification; that it shall be “well with the righteous, but woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him” (Isa. 3:10-11).

This Word tells us that every person on earth has an appointed time and that his days are like the days of a hireling (Job 7:1). The same Word tells us that we are born unto strife and that we have no abiding city here. And we could go on like this, for God’s Word does not keep us ignorant of the reality of life. It does not deceive or mislead us. It is abundantly clear in those things that concern the honor of God and our salvation. For that reason Christ admonishes us in John 5:39, “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.” Hence also the Apostle Peter’s admonition in II Peter 1:19, “We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts.” May we, with our children and grandchildren, be privileged by the grace of God to learn to appreciate this great treasure God has given us in His Word. It can make us wise unto salvation. It is like unto a fire and a hammer, but also a two-edged sword that cuts from two sides. This Word enlightens and comforts the soul.

May in this new year this Word be unto many across the length and breadth of the earth a power of God unto salvation. It is known only to the Lord whether we shall live through this new year to the end. It is also possible that it has been determined in God’s counsel that this year is to be the year of our death. We are assured of nothing. Nothing is more uncertain than our life, as we see from day to day. Many events show us the brevity of life. We do not need a sickbed to die. We read in God’s Word: “Thou taken away their breath, they die.” Is it not remarkable how many people die lately from cancer and heart attacks? We may truly consider this a judgment on account of the increasing violation of God’s commandments. Already in Moses’ days God told him to tell the people of Israel what they could expect if they would despise and forsake the ways of the Lord. From year to year the number of those who die in accidents increases. Thousands upon thousands die on the roads. They left their homes in good health, stepped into their cars or a plane, and suddenly death terminated their lives. They did not even have time to call on God or to think about death; their lives were suddenly cut short and they were summoned before the Judge of all the earth.

Truly, a person is not certain of his life for one second. We know that death can strike suddenly, but it always concerns someone else, not ourselves. We believe that someone else can suddenly die, but not we ourselves. In our deep fall we have chosen death instead of life; but when it comes to accepting this fact, we reveal our bitter enmity. We do not want to reap what we have sown; but God carries out His threat: “ in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” God’s justice and truth demand the death of a sinner; God cannot abdicate His justice, and He cannot deny Himself. God is unchangeable in His essence, but He is also unchangeable in the fulfillment of His promises as well as in the consummation of His threats. “The soul that sinneth it shall die.”

No one can save himself from the grave. And to die means to meet God. Oh, nothing is more urgent than to remember our Creator in the days of good health, so that we may be prepared and made ready to meet God. And we can meet God in peace only in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. Outside of Christ, God is a consuming fire and an eternal burning that no one can approach. Only in Christ God is gracious and merciful unto all who call on Him. Christ by His passive and active obedience has satisfied God’s justice. By His blood and righteousness He reconciles a sinner with God, but through His mediation He also reconciles God with an elect sinner. It is only through the death of His Son that this can take place. By swallowing up death Christ has obtained an eternal victory.

Oh, may this year be the year of His good pleasure for each and every one of us! That would be the greatest blessing that could be bestowed upon us. We know that man is accountable for all his actions. We are reasonable creatures, and God has already bestowed much effort upon the tree of our souls (cf. Luke 13:6ff.) — we have been born and brought up in the truth; we have received the sacrament of holy baptism; God’s Name has been invoked upon us: our lives are evidences of God’s concern over us; and God has followed us with blessings and jugdments from our early youth. Truly, God has manifested His great concern over us, also during the year that lies behind us, and all the days of our lives. Many have been His warnings to us, many His admonitions. Great has been His long-suffering and mercy. “What could have been done more to my vineyard,” so says the Lord Himself,” that I have not done in it?” From day to day we are loaded down with His tokens of mercy. If God had done to us according to our sins, we would have been cast into the lowest place of hell years ago. He has made Himself free from our blood.

But what have we done with His blessings? What are we doing with them? What has been our answer to these tokens of His kindness during the years that lie behind us, and what is our response to them from day to day? If we are honest, we must acknowledge that our response has been ingratitude and an increasing accumulation of guilt. We have paid no attention and shown no humiliation. Instead we harden our hearts in the face of all God’s mercies, and we continue in our own ways that cannot but lead to eternal death. “It has not seemed good to man to keep God in remembrance.” Christ said to the Jews, “And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life” (John 5:40).

There are some whose consciences still speak once in a while, but in general, mankind sleeps on as if no death and eternity were imminent. By nature we are dead unto our own death, and blind unto our blindness; indeed, we cannot and will not even think about death and judgment. Truly, words fail us to put into words the depth of our misery and of the state of our death, for words cannot be found to express it. Christ, in the state of His deep humiliation, identified Himself with and subjected Himself to our state of death, and when He did, His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. He cried out: “Is there a grief like unto this my grief?” And when that becomes reality in our lives, then our bones are vexed (Ps. 6:2).

The fear of the Lord should move us to faith, and the mercies of God should move us to conversion, but it becomes manifest in our lives that it is only the Spirit that can quicken us. The Lord Jesus said in the Parable of the Rich Man that even if one rose from the dead, they would not be persuaded — and “they” does not mean only our neighbors, but we ourselves as well. Maybe it is terrible to write this down, but by nature all man wants is to go to hell. In Paradise we deliberately and voluntarily separated ourselves from God, never to return to Him. We surrendered ourselves to the devil, sin, and the world; and by nature we all choose the shortest way to hell!

The fall of Adam is an absolute, irrevocable fact, and what took place there in Paradise is repeated from day to day in our own lives. Hence there is not a single excuse to be found in our lives; and in that great day of judgment man will not be able to answer one out of a thousand questions. Man will be mute when God calls him to judgment. And the end will be that man will curse God when he finds himself in eternal perdition, on account of his suffering and grief, and will go on cursing everlastingly. He will curse the day when he was born; he will curse the day when God came to him with His Word and the gospel. Indeed, he will curse God and himself, but also his fellow man; and he will go on cursing without ever stopping. Oh, how man should tremble and shudder! He should be afraid to start a new year while still unconverted and unreconciled with God!

The time that lies behind us will never return except in the day of judgment. The time that lies ahead of us may be so brief that every moment it might be too late to be converted. Hence Moses prayed in Psalm 90:12, “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

How often is New Year’s Day spent in vanity and wantonness! This would be quite different if man would sense the seriousness of life and the awesomeness of eternity! Then there would be weeping instead of laughter. Then he would have a greater desire to seek a solitary place to unburden his soul before God than to seek the company of those who are of the world.

How little seriousness is found even among those who are professors of the truth! How little is the effect the truth has upon the people, and how thoughtlessly man travels toward eternity! We simply ignore the truth and we seek and afford ourselves rest and pleasure by following the customs of the world, telling ourselves that there is nothing wrong with having a little fun. It hardly enters our minds that the Word of God says, “For whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” How empty is mere religion that is devoid of the fear of God! Fool that he is, man thinks that if he conducts himself with moderation, things will turn out all right for him. This implies, of course, that he secretly blames God for his defects. Man today is still the same as were Adam and Eve in Paradise after they had sinned. They covered their nakedness with fig leaves. Man advances all kinds of excuses and he is constantly busy defending himself and rationalizing his conduct to continue in his chosen ways, which in essence is nothing but enmity and rebellion against God.

Those, however, in whose hearts there may be the true fear of God, have a fear of everything that is of the world. They consider everything that is not of Christ as loss and dung. The Lord makes His people a willing people in the day of His power. Then man begins to condemn himself and to justify God. Then he begins to confess humbly, uprightly, and freely all his trespasses before the Lord. Then it becomes a wonder to him that earth still carries him and heaven still covers him. Then sin becomes a grievous thing unto him and a bitterness unto his soul. Then all his imagined righteousness becomes as a filthy garment.

It has been said that if you want to know what sin is, you should ask this of a person who has recently been quickened and who is living under the conviction of sin. The new life of such a person is so tender that he considers even things that are permissible in themselves to be sin. I am not referring to pious legalism or legalistic piety, or to hypocritical self-righteousness, because they, too, are an abomination in the sight of God; but to the fruit of true conversion that manifests itself in a true sorrow over sin and in a fleeing even from the garment that is polluted with the flesh. This attitude is not the result of esteeming oneself above one’s fellow men but of self-knowledge and the discovery of one’s own evil and wicked heart.

Truly, a person with true self-knowledge does not consider himself better than others; on the contrary, for grace humbles a person. A heart that has been discovered unto itself and is operated upon by the Holy Spirit experiences grief and sorrow when it realizes that it has grieved and insulted God; hence when it experiences a little of the love of God, it hates sin, allsin, and is an enemy of sin and desires nothing but righteousness.

God’s people are afraid of themselves; they know what kind of spirit dwells in them and that even the smallest sin makes a separation between the Lord and their soul and robs them of the liberty to come unto God. Oh, when we may come to see what sin is in the sight of a holy and righteous God, and what it has cost Christ, then we can no longer think so lightly about sin and live so unconcernedly. It is true, God’s children know that they are waging a losing battle; nevertheless they have a sincere desire to walk before the Lord in childlike fear. “O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.” And with Paul they say, “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man.” They would like to be able to pull out all sin root and branch from their hearts and live holy lives before the Lord. Sin dishonors God, denies Christ, strengthens the world, and destroys oneself. Sin crucifies Christ and condemns oneself. “Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee, and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?” (Ps. 139:21) — not only outwardly but also inwardly!

God’s people become more and more disappointed with themselves; nevertheless, that divine nature that has been given them wants nothing else but to acknowledge the Lord in all their ways and to cast all their cares upon Him. It is their constant prayer: “Lord, I can’t do it it my own strength; I can’t let go of any sin, but wilt Thou take it out of my hands so that I may entrust myself wholly to Thee. By nature I am not willing to follow Thee, but wilt Thou make me willing and let my eyes be constantly upon Thee. Lord, my flesh won’t let Thee rule me, but Thou hast given unto Thy Son power over all flesh; therefore let Him subjugate my evil flesh. Lord Jesus, be Thou King in and over my heart!” With God, we can enter, pass through, and leave this life!

Privileged are those people whose Guide is God! No matter what depths of adversity await them, also in this new year, God has given them His promises which in Christ Jesus are yea and Amen. And His promises fail not. God’s children will lack neither bread nor water. They will not perish in times of scarcity or famine. They may trust in and plead upon those promises by faith. God’s people will not drown in the waters of discouragement or be consumed in the flames of enmity.

No matter how dismal God’s ways may appear,

He looks down in favor on those who Him fear.

To the people who love God, who are the called according to His purpose, all things work together for good. (Rom. 8:28). The people of the world, in spite of all they possess, are desperately poor, because they do not have God, they lack Christ, and they are outside the communion and fellowship of the Holy Spirit. They do not have the only comfort in life and in death. They do not have a place in this life to where they can go for refuge; and soon they will be cast into that place where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. O beloved, all men should cry unto God both day and night as long as there is time to cry, seek, and find! Oh, that this year might be the year of God’s good pleasure! It is still possible!

And what about all that religious excitement we see in our days? It is totally void of reality. These people are happy with nothing and thank the Lord for something He has never given them. If it be well with us for eternity, something must take place in our lives that bears the stamp of the work of God. We must pass from death to life and be delivered from the dominion of Satan and sin and transplanted from the kingdom of Satan into the Kingdom of the Son of His eternal love. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new,” Paul says in II Corinthians 5:17.

Because Jacob has become so lean, a pallor lies over the Church of God everywhere. The world has penetrated its domain. It is our sins that keep the Spirit away; but may God once more rebuild His Church out of its ruinous state and visit His people as in the days of old.

May God’s Spirit work powerfully and irresistibly in the hearts of many in this new year. May this be the portion of us and of our children. If this were given to a man and his

wife, then they would be married for the second time, as it were, and be bound unto God with a bond that could never be dissolved. And if it were given to our children, our houses would first turn into houses of mourning, but afterwards they would become tabernacles of the righteous, as we read in Psalm 118:15, “The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tabernacles of the righteous: the right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly.”

On our part there is no reason why God should do it; but from eternity He has taken reasons out of Himself. And the only thing to cling to for the Church in the darkest days is:

For God in grace forsaketh never
His covenant that stands forever.
Jehovah’s truth will stand forever,
His covenant-bonds He will not sever:
The word of grace which He commands
To thousand generations stands;
The covenant made in days of old
With Abraham He doth uphold.

May the God of all grace remember us thus in this year! May He graciously bring us back to His Word and testimony and cause us to walk in His ways through heart-renewing grace. May He show His people new evidences of His favor, and establish His own work to the praise and glory of His exalted Name and the joy and salvation of His chosen ones!

Deze tekst is geautomatiseerd gemaakt en kan nog fouten bevatten. Digibron werkt voortdurend aan correctie. Klik voor het origineel door naar de pdf. Voor opmerkingen, vragen, informatie: contact.

Op Digibron -en alle daarin opgenomen content- is het databankrecht van toepassing. Gebruiksvoorwaarden. Data protection law applies to Digibron and the content of this database. Terms of use.

Printen