31 DECEMBER (PREACHED NEW YEAR’S EVENING 1774)
What do you choose?
‘They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces thitherward, saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to the LORD in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten.’ Jeremiah 50:5
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Deuteronomy 30:11–20
Some of you I trust are thus minded. You have already, through grace, chosen Jesus as your way and are walking on to Zion. The Lord encourage and strengthen you. See what a blessed hope is set before you. The Lord will guide you and support you. Only remember your own weakness, the strength and power of your enemies, and watch and pray that you may walk answerable to your high calling, that the Lord may have the glory and you the comfort of your profession. I must take it for granted that some of you have long been hearers and have had the advantage of the advice, example and prayers of the godly. Perhaps they who watched for your soul’s good are now gone to a better world. You will see them again. How will you rejoice to meet them if you walk in their way; if not, it will be a dreadful meeting. Some of you are to this hour breaking the hearts of those who wish well to your souls. Behold the Judge standeth at the door. If you still despise this salvation, sermons, friends, ministers, will all aggravate your condemnation. Some of you have been brought up in the neglect of means and under the unhappy influence of bad examples. What have too many parents to answer for! Yet your parents’ sins will not excuse yours. You now hear for yourselves, and it is at the peril of your souls if you do not begin to ask the way to Zion. Say not you are young. How know you but the year you are now entering upon may be your last? And why delay? Why unwilling to be happy too soon? If it is high time for the young, what then for the aged? Let the grey-headed sinner hear—many years you have wasted. Great is the account you have to give for abused mercies. Yet if you will now in good earnest ask the way to Zion, you may find it. One year more the Lord has waited to be gracious. But the sentence, Cut it down [Luke 13:7], cannot be far distant. O today, while it is called today, hear his voice [Hebrews 3].
FOR MEDITATION: [Asking the way to Zion, written to be sung after this sermon]
O Lord, regard thy people’s prayer,
And young and old, by grace prepare,
Thy promise now fulfil;
To dwell on Zion’s hill.
SERMON: JEREMIAH 50:5 [7/7] [TO THE YOUNG PEOPLE]
Milo 