[AI translation] Last night it was spoken here in the church that over the gate of the Old Testament, through which we passed at the end of the journey of the last year, were written these three words, "Mene, Tekel, Upharsin", that is, God has taken account of your kingdom and will bring it to an end, you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting, and now the righteous judgment of God is coming (Dan 5:25b-27).Even at the gateway through which we enter the New Year, we are greeted by a letter: the four usual letters of the New Year, the U.N.E.C. We see it in every shop window, on every postcard, on the top page of the 1950 calendar, the way people greet each other this morning. But to the eyes of our faith, these four letters are not only an abbreviation of the usual "Happy New Year" greeting, but also an explanation of how to make the New Year a truly happy one. For us, therefore, "PEACE" means "Commit your life again to Christ". This is the short content of this Word with which God welcomes us on the threshold of the New Year: "Trust in the Lord with all your mind; do not rely on your own understanding." (Prov 3:5) There can be no wiser program for the New Year than to recommit one's life to Christ. So let us take each word of this programme in turn.
1) Commit your life to Christ again! "Trust in the Lord." Trust is a great thing! It could be said that trust is the foundation of life on earth. Without it there is no peace and joyful life. If you are distrustful of the one in your house, you dare not leave home because you think he is deceiving you every minute. If you mistrust the one who is your co-worker, you dare not work with him. If you distrust the person you always buy from, you always feel robbed! If you distrust the doctor, you are in terrible agony to submit to him. When the bridges over the Danube were mined, we were reluctant to cross them, never knowing at what moment some great disaster would occur. We were insecure. Distrust means fear, anxiety, a feeling of uncertainty. You cannot live long in an atmosphere of mistrust. People's nerves are quickly frayed. It is even more dangerous when one is distrustful of God. It is no wonder that the life of a man who distrusts God is peaceful, restless, and wavering. Distrust is like when an earthquake strikes and houses collapse that were previously standing on solid ground. Distrust: a spiritual earthquake, which causes the spiritual edifice of man to collapse, or at least to totter.
That is why it is so joyful and joyful that in this new year the very first message that comes to us is to trust! That we can trust! What a great thing it is when one's life and work begins with trust! When we can start the new year with full and unconditional confidence in the tasks that await us. When we accept with confidence all God's works and actions, when we can trust Him, even when everything around us is uncertain!
The simplest law of physics is that when something, say a piece of stone, is tied to a string, and the other end of the string is fastened somewhere, there is only one point at which the stone suspended on the string is at rest. There is only one resting point for the suspended pendulum, its centre of gravity. If we search in vain for another point of rest, we cannot find one. If you support it somewhere else, it will stop, but this is not its resting point, but just a constraint that it resigns itself to because it has no other choice. The human soul is like that. For the human soul, too, there is only one point of rest: God, and only one state of rest: the state of trust in God, the state of unconditional filial trust! This is not the fatalism of the Mohammedans. Nor is it some inner indifference to the world, to life. It is not resignation, but a certain inner equilibrium, even in the storm, even in the difficulties, which comes from the certainty that in no situation am I alone, but that there is always Someone else who makes it happen: 'to those who love God all things are good'!
In modern life, there are so many people who have a bad temper. Well, this condition is always preceded by a breakdown of trust in God. For it is natural that life is hard and nerves are destroyed when the main nourishment of the nervous system, trust, is lacking! It is only in a state of trust in the living God that all damaged nerves can be restored! And look, He Himself encourages in His Word, "Trust in the Lord!" As a patient said to me recently when I visited him in the hospital and asked him what was wrong with him, and this is how he answered: I don't know, I leave it to the doctors, they know better, I trust them! Well, like that! You too, entrust your life to Christ again!
2) At the gate of the New Year, this is another word for "again"! I don't know if you can feel the grace that pulsates, the tension in that word "again". Yesterday we also talked about the fact that the hell of hell is that all possibilities and opportunities are gone forever, nothing can be replaced, nothing can be redeemed. Whoever goes there: has run out of time! That is the hell of it, that there is no "again"! You can't start again something you haven't done well, something you've messed up, something you've missed. Do you feel what a time of grace is dawning upon us again now in the mere fact that the Word is sounding again, Jesus is calling again, you can trust Him again, you can start again with Him? If you have had nothing to do with Him before, He now offers you a new opportunity; if your trust in Him has been weak and defective, you can now renew it; if you were once in grace but fell, like Peter in the court of the high priest, or like King David after his adultery with Bathsheba, you can begin again where you once began: at His cross. You can start over with Him because He is willing to start over with you.
The very fact that you are here, hearing His message: that is the sure sign that He is ready to start again. You too are free to start over as you are, as you have come here, unbelieving, pagan, doubting, dirty, judged, full of sins and failures! The word "again" means free, free for all, free for you! Commit your life to Christ again!
3) The third word is "your life": so entrust your life to Christ again! And this word, your life, is too big. We fear that if we grasp it, we shall grasp little. Let us try to break it down into its parts. What is your life made up of?
Let me tell you from my own experience, it is mostly made up of sins! What do you do with your sins? There are those who cherish them, who indulge them, who take pleasure in them, and those who make excuses for them, saying: oh, they are not such dangerous sins, but just in general, what every man has. Some don't even notice them, pretend that they are not theirs, behave as if they were not. Some deny it or blame it on the other person and soothe their conscience. Some people are devastated by their sins, and some - more than one - even commit suicide because of them. Well, then, the man who trusts in Christ does none of these things, but with great humility and everlasting gratitude, he entrusts his sins to Christ!
On the great day of atonement in the Old Testament, it was the custom for the high priest to lay both hands on the head of the goat and confess over it all the iniquities of the children of the people, all their sins and all their transgressions, and so to lay them on the head of the goat, and then to send the animal, laden with the sins of the people, out into the wilderness to bear them all away on its back to the desert! (cf. Leviticus 16:21-22) This is a foretaste of the lamb of the New Testament. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away and takes away the sins of the world, because God has cast the iniquity of us all upon Him. That is where faith begins, that I am free to acknowledge that this is what has happened to my sins: God has cast them on Jesus, who in His holy person took them up to the cross, the curse tree. He has therefore taken my sins to where they belong: to hell, to damnation - because otherwise my sins would take me there! And this is the eerie good news I preach again this New Year's morning, that you are free to give your sins to Jesus, to lay them on Him again. Free to commit your whole sinful self to the Lord Jesus to be cleansed by His holy blood, born again by His Holy Spirit, renewed and sanctified. Entrust your life to Christ again!
If you once trusted Him with your sins, you can now trust Him with everything. You can trust Him with your loved ones, because He loves them even more than you do, and He can take care of them even more than you can. You can trust Him with your eternal life, for there is no one else in the world who can keep you in heaven but Him alone! So entrust your whole life to Christ again!
4) Shall I emphasize the fourth word? "In Christ"! For it has always been about Christ. This whole New Year's greeting has credibility because it is about Christ. It gives us a firm basis of confidence that it is directed to Christ. It is because Christ begins again that we are free to begin again. We can come with our whole life because He comes before us with His whole life, He first gave us His whole life divine and human!
Entrust your life to Christ again! All the emphasis here is on the last word, on Christ! So the important thing is not for you to gather all your strength and trust yourself to someone, but to Christ. Do you understand? Trust Christ with your whole life again! In Christ, who is the same yesterday and today and forever. In whom once on earth the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily. Who, then, is God Himself in person, in the way in which God is approachable to man at all, and in the way in which man is approached by God, in the way in which man is surrounded by the living, mighty God. To this Jesus Christ you can entrust yourself and your life again!
So this New Year's greeting means to turn more and more from yourself to Christ! If you have problems in life, do not worry about them, but about Christ! Don't worry about yourself, about your own sins, but about Him! Do we know the story (Mk 6,45k) when the disciples were sailing alone across the Sea of Galilee to the other side and Jesus followed them in the fourth hour of the night, walking on the sea. The disciples were terrified, saw a ghost in Jesus and began to cry out, whereupon Jesus reassured them, "Trust, it is I, do not be afraid" (Mk 6,50): Trust, I am, I am here, do not be afraid! And is that enough?!
On New Year's morning, the Lord greets us with His Word: "Trust in the Lord with all your mind!" Wherever you see these four letters today, may the happy message ring out to you: Commit your life to Christ again!
Amen
Date: 1 January 1950.
Lesson
Zsolt 23