Good cheer for the New Year

‘The eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year.’ Deuteronomy 11:12

Suggested Further Reading: Job 23:1–17

Imagine that you and I have to live all the year without the eyes of God upon us, not finding a moment from the beginning of the year to the end of the year in which we perceive the Lord to be caring for us or to be waiting to be gracious to us. Imagine that there is none to whom we may appeal beyond our own fellow creatures for help. O miserable supposition! We have come to the opening of the year, and we have to get through it somehow, we must stumble through January, go muddling through the winter, groaning through the spring, sweating through the summer, fainting through the autumn, and grovelling on to another Christmas, and no God to help us. But I will suppose this in the case of you sinners. You know you have been living for twenty, or thirty, or forty years without God, without prayer, without trust, without hope, yet I should not wonder that if I were solemnly to tell you that God would not let you pray during the next year, and would not help you if you did pray, I should not wonder if you were greatly startled at it. Though I believe that the Lord will hear you from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, though I believe that he will watch over you and bless you if you seek him, yet I fear that the most of you are despising his care, living without fellowship with him; and so you are without God, without Christ, without hope, and will be so from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.

For meditation: This was Spurgeon’s position before his conversion on 6 January 1850. If you are not yet a Christian, this will remain your position until you are converted. But if you never are converted, this is what your condition will be throughout eternity—only it will be infinitely worse—for ever without hope and without God (Ephesians 2:12).

Sermon no. 728
6 January (1867)