The beginning of months.
A new start
I. The idea of a new start is naturally attractive to all of us. We are fatigued, we are dissatisfied, and justly so, with the time past of our lives. We long for a gift of amnesty and oblivion.
II. There are senses in which this is impossible. The continuity of life cannot be broken. There is a continuity, a unity, an identity, which annihilation only could destroy.
III. “The beginning of months” is made so by an exodus. Redemption is the groundwork of the new life. If there is in any of us a real desire for change, we must plant our feet firmly on redemption.
IV. When we get out of Egypt, we must remember that there is still Sinai in front, with its thunderings and voices. We have to be schooled by processes not joyous but grievous. These processes cannot be hurried, they must take time. Here we must expect everything that is changeful, and unresting, and unreposeful, within as without. But He who has promised will perform. He who has redeemed will save. He who took charge will also bring through. (Dean Vaughan.)
The first month of the year
I. The first month of the year is a good time for religious contemplation and devotion. Then the flight of time, the events of life, and the mortality of man, may all furnish topics for reflection. Then especially should the Passover be celebrated, the blood of Christ anew be sprinkled on the soul; and in this spirit of trust in the Saviour should the year begin.
II. The first month of the year is eventful in the history of individual and collective life. How many souls, awakened by the circumstances of life, have been led to the Cross at this solemn period? What we are then, we are likely to remain throughout the year; we then get an impulse for good or evil which will affect our moral character to the end. The first month is the keynote of the year’s moral life. It is the rough sketch of the soul’s life for the year. We should therefore seek to observe it unto the Lord.
III. The first month of the year is important in its relation to the commercial prospects of men. The new year may mark the advent of new energy, or it may witness the continuance of the old indolence. Lessons:
1. That the ordering of months and of years is of God.
2. That the first month must remind us of the advent of the Saviour.
3. That the first month must be consecrated by true devotion.
4. That the Church must pay some attention to the calendar of the Christian year.
5. That God usually by His ministers makes known His mind to His Church. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
The beginning of months
I want to bring to your mind this fact, that, just as the people of Israel when God gave them the Passover had a complete shifting and changing of all their dates, and began their year on quite a different day, so when God gives to His people to eat the spiritual passover there takes place in their chronology a very wonderful change. Saved men and women date from the dawn of their true life; not from their first birthday, but from the day whereto they were born again of the Spirit of God, and entered into the knowledge and enjoyment of spiritual things.
I. First, then, let us describe this remarkable event, which was henceforth to stand at the head of the Jewish year, and, indeed, at the commencement of all Israelitish chronology.
1. This event was an act of salvation by blood. The law demands death--“The soul that sinneth it shall die.” Christ, my Lord, has died in my stead: as it is written, “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree.” Such a sacrifice is more than even the most rigorous law could demand. “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” Therefore do we sit securely within doors, desiring no guard without to drive away the destroyer; for, when God sees the blood of Jesus He will pass over us.
2. Secondly, that night they received refreshment from the lamb. Being saved by its blood, the believing households sat down and fed upon the lamb. It was a solemn feast, a meal of mingled hope and mystery. Do you remember when first you fed upon Christ, when your hungry spirit enjoyed the first morsel of that food of the soul? It was dainty fare, was it not?
3. The third event was the purification of their houses from leaven, for that was to go in a most important way side by side with the sprinkling of the blood and the eating of the lamb. You cannot feed on Christ and at the same time hold a lie in your right hand by vain confidence in yourself, or by love of sin. Self and sin must go. This month is the beginning of months, the first month of the year to us, when the Spirit of truth purges out the spirit of falsehood.
4. A fourth point in the Passover is not to be forgotten. On the Passover night there came, as the result of the former things, a wonderful, glorious, and mighty deliverance. “This month,” etc.
II. Now, secondly, I want to mention the varieties of its recurrence among us at this day.
1. The first recurrense is of course on the personal salvation of each one of us. The whole of this chapter was transacted in your heart and mine when first we knew the Lord.
2. But then it happens again in a certain sense when the man’s house is saved. Remember, this was a family business. A family begins to live in the highest sense when, as a family, without exception, it has all been redeemed, all sprinkled with the blood, all made to feed on Jesus, all purged from sin, and all set at liberty to go out of the domains of sin, bound for the kingdom.
3. Extend the thought--it was not only a family ordinance, but it was for all the tribes of Israel. There were many families, but in every house the passover was sacrificed. Would it not be a grand thing if you that employ large numbers of men should ever be able to gather all together and hopefully say, “I trust that all these understand the sprinkling of the blood, and all feed upon Christ.”
III. And now I come to show in what light this date is to be regarded, if it has occurred to us in the senses I have mentioned. Primarily, if it has occurred in the first sense to us personally: what about it then?
1. Why the day in which we first knew the Saviour as the Paschal Lamb should always be the most honourable day that has ever dawned upon us. Prize the work of grace beyond all the treasures of Egypt.
2. This date is to be regarded as the beginning of life. Let your conversion be the burial of the old existence, and as for that which follows after, take care that you make it real life, worthy of the grace which has quickened you.
3. Our life, beginning as it does at our spiritual passover, and at our feeding upon Christ, we ought always to regard our conversion as a festival and remember it with praise. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The beginning of days
If you have no such spiritual new year’s day, now is a good time to secure one. Says old Thomas Fuller: “Lord, I do discover a fallacy, whereby I have long deceived myself, which is this: I have desired to begin my amendment from my birthday, or from the first day of the year, or from some eminent festival, that so my repentance might bear some remarkable date. But when those days were come, I have adjourned my amendment to some other time. Thus, whilst I could not agree with myself when to start, I have almost lost the running of the race. I am resolved thus to befool myself no longer. I see no day like to-day Grant, therefore, that to-day I may hear Thy voice. And if this day be remarkable in itself for nothing else, give me to make it memorable in my soul; thereupon, by Thy assistance, beginning the reformation of my life.” Let this day be the beginning of months, the first month of the year to you. (H. C. Trumbull.)
The lessons of time
1. Time gives birth to actions.
2. God ordains that certain periods of life shall determine others (Luke 19:44).
3. There is an extension of man’s trial. One chance more.
4. Procrastination ends destructively, Not only thief of time, but also hardener of men’s hearts.
5. Time will end.
6. The issues of time will last for ever. (British Weekly.)
Turning over a new leaf
The time has come for turning over a new leaf. As the town clock struck midnight of the last day of the old year divers and sundry resolutions which had lain dormant a long time, waiting for the New Year to ring its chimes, came forth into new life. They had long had an existence, these new resolutions had, for in reality they are not new at all, but quite venerable; for on the first of January of many a past year they have been brought to the surface. And so the new leaf has been turned over, and on its virgin pages these new resolutions have been written, and, alas! not inscribed for the first time. Were they not written on the new leaf on the first of January, just a year ago, and the New Year’s day before that, and can you not go back, and back, and back, till you come to your childhood and the time when you first began to turn over a new leaf? These new leaves that we are always turning over--how they accuse us! We write on the newly turned page that we will do many duties which we have left undone--many duties in the home, the church--many duties to our friends, our neighbours, duties to God and to ourselves; and how long is it before there comes a little January gust and blows the leaf back again? and then all goes on pretty much as before. The trouble with this matter of leaf-turning, of making good resolutions only to break them, is twofold.
1. The effort is not made in good faith--it is more a whim than a solemn purpose put into action, and so it is we have altogether too much regard to times and seasons, and too little to the imperative demand of to-day. Conscience is a court whose fiat is to be obeyed not on New Year’s day, or Christmas, or on a birthday, but now--on the instant. A man who defers to execute a right resolution till some particular day has arrived will be pretty sure not to carry it out at all.
2. Then the second difficulty is that we rely too much upon our own will and too little upon God’s help. No man can change his own nature or reform himself. He can do much, if he but will, in the direction of carrying cut a good resolution; but the real efficient reliance must be God. (Christian Age.)