New Year’s Eve
31 December 2019
Beloved. New Year’s and New Year’s Eve are rather interesting for us in the Church. The simple fact is that we in the Church have already had our New Year’s. That was the First Sunday in Advent; that began the new Church Year. There we heard the call to prepare ourselves for His coming—to celebrate His coming as that Baby born in Bethlehem to be our Savior; to welcome Him as He comes to us today in His holy word and sacrament; to watch and to be ready for His return when He comes again on the Last Day in glory. And so, our New Year’s Eve then was, if you will, that Last Sunday of the Church Year in which we heard of our Lord’s Jesus’ return on the Last Day, in Judgment.
But tonight the page of the secular calendar turns from 2019 to 2020. And it does us well as Christians also to make use of this New Year’s for a good and salutary purpose for our souls. The New Year is the natural time for us to look back over our lives the past year. It is a wonderful time for us to stop and pause and reflect. And, as Christians, there is no better way for us to do that than to gather here tonight in our Lord’s house around Him and His gifts and blessings.
Much of the world around us, though, is out “celebrating” the coming of the New Year. But this is not very thoughtful; there is no examination and contemplation. It is like so much of this world: it is just a party that puts a thin veneer of joy over an unexamined life, a veneer that quickly and easily fails when real life hits. The real and the best way to usher out the old year and welcome the new, is to do what we are doing now—gathering together in prayer and asking the Lord’s blessing on us and the New Year. How much more good is accomplished for the New Year by our Lord’s Church in prayer than by all the parties and festivities that have been and are going on throughout the world that are welcoming 2020 and wishing for the best!
What we see here in church tonight is really a beautiful picture of the reality of the holy Christian Church in the world every day. We are gathered together in all seriousness in prayer and to receive the gifts Jesus gives us in His word and Sacrament. The world around us, though, is engaged in all sorts of “fun” activity that at best may provide a momentary joy but has no lasting value; the parties will be over and the clean-up begins. The people of the world around us are engaged in all sorts of activities, busyness, etc. trying to get ahead, trying to get make their way, trying to fill a void they feel in their lives; but the Christian has, through faith in Christ, rest and quietness of heart and conscience—oh, to be sure we will all have our times of worry and unease, even panic—but at the end of the day we know that in and through Jesus things are right between us and God, that we are God’s dear child and an heir of heaven. To be sure, the devil and our sinful self will want us to forget that—and at times we will; the world around us will try to take our eyes off the Lord, but the Lord is there at work calling us and bringing us back to Him. That’s why it’s vital we constantly be in the word of God, talking to Him in prayer and that we are here in Church to receive Him, His gifts and blessings—here where He has promised to meet us.
What we see here tonight in church—us in quietness and prayer and reflecting on our Lord—is really a beautiful illustration of the Christian life and of what our Lord says through St. Isaiah in our text this evening, and what serves us well as we enter 2020 in a few hours: For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.
Again, there is nothing wrong with the New Year’s parties and get togethers in and of themselves but when that and that alone is the focus, the benefit of New Year’s as a time of reflection on life by everyone and also as a time of prayer by the Christian is completely lost. Let us take our cue from the words of our text as the New Year comes fast upon us. Let us leave the old year in repentance and rest: In returning and rest you shall be saved; and enter the New Year in quietness and trust in the Lord: in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.
The turning of the calendar page from one year to the next gives us the wonderful opportunity to look back over the past year. Perhaps we will see many disappointments over the year—things that did not go exactly as we had liked or hoped. Perhaps we will see what we think are ways the Lord did not answer our prayers. Perhaps we will look back with more of a spiritual eye and examine our heart and life and see many gross and serious sins we committed or don’t see much, if any improvement, in living a more holy life.
But then perhaps we will look back and see so many of God’s gifts and graces to us. Perhaps we will see how He blessed us in earthly things. Perhaps we will see how we have grown in the faith and are now closer to the Lord than we were at the beginning of the year. Perhaps we will see how wonderfully the Lord answered our prayers in ways far better than we had hoped or imagined.
Our lives this past year are certainly a mixture of what we could see and consider as both good and bad. That is to be expected—after all we are sinners living in a sin contaminated world; but all people enjoy the blessings of the Lord, after all [Mt 5.45] He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. But, dear Christian, look for—especially in the midst of your sorrows and trials this past year—evidences of the Lord’s graces. They’ll be there abundantly!
For a spiritually beneficial use of the coming New Year by rightly reflecting on the ending year, notice what the Lord says in our text: In returning and rest you shall be saved. The image of returning is the call to repentance. We return when we leave. When we leave God’s paths and will and way, that’s sin; but when we repent of our sin, we return to the Lord and strive all the harder to live a life more in accord with His holy will. This is not just something that we do once a year at New Year’s—but it does help emphasize it—but examining of heart and conscience is something we need to do every day. Daily looking at our lives and heart in the light of God’s holy Ten Commandments to recognize and root out sin is absolutely vital for us as Christians. If you don’t already, make a resolution this New Year to daily examine your life in the mirror of God’s holy law to recognize and repent of sin. Each evening is like a mini-New Year’s Eve. The calendar page turns—what have I done with my day? What sin and what good have I done? What do I need to repent of? This is each day returning to the Lord after seeing that we have strayed from Him. In returning and rest you shall be saved. Let this New Year and each day of it be a day that we turn from of self-chosen way of sin and return to the Lord. Let this New Year and each day of it be one in which we turn from defiant self-will to trusting self-surrender to God. Again, let the quiet of this night and the changing of the year lead us to leave this old year in repentance.
What a blessed time for us to be doing this. We are in the week of Christmas! We remember that the Christ Child has come to be our Savior. Our Savior from sin has come and so we can repent all the more boldly in the full knowledge that Jesus our Savior has come and that He obeyed God’s holy Law for us and that He died on the cross for our sins and rose again Victor over sin, death devil and hell. That’s why we can repent—our Savior has come. Jesus, the Christ-Child, came bringing us the year of jubilee, the year in which we enjoy the graces and blessings of God. We have no cause or reason to doubt. Our salvation is, in Jesus, an accomplished fact! This new year is a happy new year for us—Jesus came, we need not despair over our sins. He drives all care away. As we lived this past year in this grace and forgiveness—since Jesus came to us this past year as well—so too we can live in this new year in that same joy and confidence: Jesus was born and came to be our Savior! We need not doubt that that will change in the New Year. Jesus will continue to come to us this New Year, giving us in His holy word and Sacraments that forgiveness of sin and eternal life.
That’s precisely why we can have rest—great spiritual rest, rest of soul and conscience. In returning and rest you shall be saved. As we return to the Lord in confession, we can be certain of the forgiveness of because of Jesus and His saving work, because the Christ Child has come. In fact that’s the very that we can return to the Lord, that we can repent—because our forgiveness is, in Jesus, certain. We in faith hold to Jesus’ work and the forgiveness He won for us and in that faith, and at His command/ invitation we return to the Lord. We live in that great rest, that rest of forgiveness of sins and things being right between us and God. We have rest; we are greatly comforted; we are rescued from our spiritual enemies. In returning and rest you shall be saved.
As we leave 2019 in repentance and rest, we then enter 2020 in quietness and confidence, again as the Lord says in our text: in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. That means we, having repented and having rest of conscience, can now commit the New Year to God. We leave it to the Lord to guide and direct it for us, for our spiritual good. Whatever may happen in the New Year, we know in faith that He is using and working it for our spiritual good. After all, we are in Jesus, reconciled to God; we are His dear children and heirs of heaven. Certainly He will not allow anything to come upon us that He does not and cannot use for our spiritual good, for leading us to and preparing us for eternal life in heaven. That’s why we live lives of quietness. That’s the life of faith—letting the Lord lead and guide. But quietness also means perhaps a life of suffering, patience and waiting on the Lord but all the while living in His rest and so being calm, waiting, waiting and entrusting the cause to the Lord. That’s that trust/ confidence in the Lord. Because what will it do in time of trouble that will most certainly hit in 2020? That trust clings to the Lord; it turns away from all self-help and leaves it to the Lord to act. Faith is that quiet trust in the Lord. And that’s why we can enter the New Year in quietness and trust—faith knows that come what may, all things are in God’s hands and He is working. That right relationship with God brings quietness because we can be calm because we know and trust in Him to keep His promises.
In quietness and in trust shall be your strength. That quietness is the quietness of faith and it is the loudest praise of God. It humbly receives God’s gifts and blessings and relies on Him for help in time of need/ trial. So when in the New Year we are attacked by our spiritual enemies, we overpower them in quietness and trust—that is, in faith in the Lord because He is our strength. As we rely upon Him, we face whatever we face not in our own strength but in the strength of the Lord. In this quietness, and in fact weakness, God’s power is most mightily seen. Dear Christian, we stand quiet and secure, firmly established on the Rock so come what may in 2020, relying on the Lord and His strength, we will stand.
Beloved, let us make the most of the New Year’s Eve and leave 2019 in repentance and rest and enter 2020 in quietness and confidence. For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. Happy New Year! INJ