Deuteronomy 32:20 And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very fraudulent generation… The wish which Moses here utters for the congregation of Israel is a wish to which a minister of the Gospel may also give utterance in behalf of his congregation, more especially at the present season. For surely it behoves us also — who have been brought to the knowledge of Christ, and of the power of His resurrection — to consider our latter end: and so much the more as we have received a fuller and clearer assurance of what that end is to be, both of the glory to which we are called, and of the misery which we may draw down on our souls. The advance of time itself is unseen, unfelt. Its footsteps fall so lightly that they do not strike on any of our senses. Drop after drop bubbles up from the sightless fountain of eternity; and yet their bubbling is not heard. Wave rolls on after wave in never-resting, never-ending flow; and yet there are no sounds of their breaking against the shore. Time never halts so that we should catch hold of it, has no voice that we should hear it, no outward form or body that we should see it. But man for his own purposes has gathered it up into hours and days and weeks and months and years; inasmuch as without such measures of time none of the business of this world could be carried on. Hardly without them could we hold any intercourse with our neighbours, or have any orderly knowledge whatsoever. This division of time, it is true, is little heeded by most persons, except with reference to the concerns of their worldly life. Yet none who have a right notion of the importance of good housekeeping for the management of Our heavenly, no less than of our earthly concerns, will fail to do that with regard to their spiritual life, without which there can be no good housekeeping anywhere. At the end of every day they who are anxious to do well and to prosper in this world will cast their thoughts over what they have done, and will consider what they have left undone that they ought to have done; they will calculate what they have spent, what they have sold, what they have gained, what they have lost, and will strike a balance. At the end of a week they take in a wider field; they cast up the accounts of the whole week, and estimate its profit and its loss. But at the close of the year the range is a great deal wider still; then the accounts of the whole year are to be got in, and put in order and cast up and settled. No one who has any portion of the riches of this world, and who desires to keep out of difficulties will neglect this; no one who is engaged in the traffic of this world can neglect it without bringing on certain ruin. This, too, is the very work which you ought now to be engaged in. The old year is on its last legs, and will soon be laid with the multitude of those that have passed away before it. That we have all of us been far too forgetful of God during the past year, no one will deny. The very best and godliest amongst us will be the first to acknowledge this. Others may make the acknowledgment carelessly; but the pious will be stricken with grief and shame. Yet surely there is something very strange in this forgetfulness. For would it not be strange if a servant were to forget his master, in whose house he was living and who fed and clothed him? Would it not be strange if a son were to forget his father, to whom he owed his life, his nurture and support, his education, all that he has and all that he knows? Now, God is in a far higher sense our Master and Father, and has done far more for us than any earthly master ever did for his servants, or any Earthly father for his children. What I wish to urge upon you is the pressing importance of undertaking a strict and solemn examination of the whole flame and fashion of your life during the last year of your actions, of your feelings, of your thoughts. Take care that the account be a true one; it is a matter of life and death. Try your heart at the bar of your conscience, as though before a judge; and do not exercise your subtilty in trying to diminish or excuse or conceal your offences, but rather in drawing them forth to the light, in uncovering their nakedness and exposing their enormity. Endeavour to look into your hearts with the same eye with which God looks into them; and then to confess all your sins to God. Throw yourself on the mercy of your Saviour; beseech Him to forgive you; beseech Him to heal you; beseech Him to grant you His Spirit, that you may be purified from these your sins. Reckon up the list of them, and write it on your hearts, that it may ever be before you to put you on your guard in the hour of temptation. Weigh your actions with reference, not to the fruit they are to bear in this world, but to the fruit they are to bear in the next world; and in all your plans and purposes, in all your hopes and wishes, whatever their immediate purposes may be, consider your latter end. (J. C. Hare, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith. |
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