But Jacob must have had other and different thoughts—thoughts which preponderated. As he called to mind his first passage over Jordan, did not he remember the wonderful vision that was vouchsafed him of angels descending to earth, ascending to heaven, in token of Divine providence, of the intercourse between man and God? Did he not remember the Voice which promised to be with him, to keep him in all places whither he went, to bring him again to this land, to give it to him and to his seed after him? Did he not look along those twenty years, and remember that God had been with him, and that, by His command, he was now coming back; and did he not hope, yes, even against hope, that God would be with him in the coming struggle, that He would crown His mercy and goodness with a present success, and with the establishment of himself and his seed in the promised land? And one other remembrance surely he had. He remembered the vow which in the fresh reverence of God’s presence, in glad and grateful acceptance of His promises, he had solemnly made, “The Lord shall be my God;” and he must have remembered how often he had forgotten that vow, how generally he had slightly regarded it. These I suppose to have been the feelings and remembrances which filled the breast of Jacob, when he uttered the prayer in which our text occurs. Observe how that prayer exhibits the right ordering of these feelings, making prominent, putting uppermost thoughts and acknowledgments of God’s goodness; and, in the moment of greatest peril, pausing to review mercies, and to give thanks! There is no bitter lamentation of his hard lot throughout those years of promised blessing; there is no pleading with God, that if he had sinned he had surely been punished enough; there is no mention of the merits of his contrite heart and amended life; there is no angry feeling against Esau, no supplication that God would smite and confound him. It is a godly, a model prayer. Betaking himself to God in the hour of danger, as his only confidence and help, he humbly urges no personal claim, but—that he is in the place of God’s commanding. “‘Thou Lord that saidst unto me Return unto thy country and unto thy kindred,’ I did not recklessly run into danger, I did not voluntarily gratify the natural yearning of my poor heart. Thou broughtest me here, O Lord protect me here;” and then having put forth himself, though but such a little way, and coming to consider God, Who had shown him such wondrous goodness, Who had fulfilled for him so truthfully all His promises, he exclaims, “I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth which thou hast showed unto Thy servant: for with my staff—as a solitary, poor individual—I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands. Deliver me, I pray thee.”
This seems to me, brethren, a fit theme for a sermon on New Year’s Eve. Jacob, come back from Haran to Jordan, where he had made a covenant with God, may well typify our return to-night to the sanctuary of God, whence we went forth refreshed and pledged last New Year’s Eve. Jacob’s reflections—he is the pattern of a mediator—may well provoke us to ask of the days that are past, to remember all the way which the Lord our God has led us. Jacob’s prayer shows us how to speak to God, what we should feel in His presence on such an occasion as this, how to propitiate Him, and to secure His defence and blessing in what lies before us.
I will not attempt, brethren, to picture the circumstances through which you have passed in the year which is now all but ended; many of them I could only guess at, many of them, to me, would be unimaginable. Recall them for yourselves and meditate on them. They will teach you much, and influence you much. I will address you simply as those who have made a halt in the journey of life, and who want now God’s blessing in the known and unknown dangers, anxieties, sufferings, and labours that lie before you in the coming year.
Well: let your requests be made known unto God with prayer; above all—yes! I mean it—above all, with thanksgiving.
But, first, before you approach God, to speak to Him, to ask of Him, to thank Him, be sure that you can say to Him, “I am in the way of Thy commandments.” If at this moment you are contentedly different from what you know He would have you to be; if you indulge, or do not resolutely renounce any besetting sin; if you deliberately neglect any positive duty; if in will and affections, and aims, you are worldly and selfish, and do not seek to be otherwise; if you are planning anything, or hoping for anything which God does not approve; if you are shrinking from, desiring to avoid, what He appoints; if you have not made up your minds to try to be holy, to walk in the way of righteousness; then, brethren, you are disqualified to pray to God. He hears not such. He has made no promises to them: they are not His. Go fashion yourselves (He will mercifully give you grace to do it) into the character that He loves; get you into the paths that He has marked out; turn your face towards the Holy Land, and then come to tell Him of your felt unworthiness, to speak His praise, to intreat Him to be with you, to defend and prosper you; and be sure you shall be welcomed and blessed.
But, supposing you not disqualified to come, supposing you bent on coming, consider now your right posture and deportment before God. Ask nothing of right, ask all out of felt unworthiness, and that, not simply the unworthiness of the stranger, and alien, who want mercies which they have never known, and speak to a God that has not hitherto been their God, as the publican cried, “God be merciful to me a sinner;” but such an unworthiness as belonged to the prodigal, such as he felt and groaned under, when, reflecting on all the love and blessedness which he had experienced in his father’s house, and had despised, and sinned against, and seeing the Father coming towards him, ready to pardon, ready to embrace, ready to lead him home again, he was humbled to the very dust before Him, on account of his goodness, and declared himself unworthy to be called His son. Oh, my brethren, if you do not feel unworthy, when you approach the all-good and all-holy God, and if the feeling is not one enlightened by, and full of the remembrances of blessings already received, you are unfit to ask for further blessings. Not to have used God’s blessings is great indignity; not to be thankful for them is base ingratitude; but not to feel, that whether used or not used, appreciated or not appreciated, they are many and undeserved—this is to deny that you ever received them, or, claiming them as a right, to defy God to withhold them! Cultivate then, I pray you, this feeling of unworthiness; and, that you may do so the more readily, review the mercies, the promises made true which you have received; and tell out their number, their kind, and their magnitude to the God Who gave them, and would have them acknowledged. “With my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands.” Now the argument of these words is, “I do not come to Thee, professing that I am a fit person to be helped, but I claim Thee as a God who are wont to help such as I am. I am not worthy of the least of Thy mercies: but yet Thou hast shown me marvellous mercies. I possess now the evidences and pledges of Thy goodness. Therefore I pray for, I humbly count on further blessing, not because I am a holy man, but because Thou art a good God, and My good God.” It is an argument which prevails with God. He is pleased to see that we recognise His former gifts, that we make them—and not ourselves, our love of Him, our obedience, our prayers, and fastings, and study of His Word, and use of His grace—the ground of application. He likes that His consistent faithfulness should be invoked; that since He has made a beginning, just on that very account, He should be looked to (so as it be humbly), to continue His work, and to accomplish it. When you go to God to ask for fresh blessings, you cannot take with you better and more effectual words than those which make mention of, which exhibit as promises and pledges, what you have already received.
But these words are not simply an argument for further help; they are, besides, a free acknowledgment, a pure praise of what has been given. They may be the plea of a beseeching heart, but they are besides the tribute of a grateful heart; and it is in this sense, brethren, that I specially wish you to adopt them to-night, and to make them a thanksgiving to God for past mercies reviewed. “With my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands.” Jacob might have found mercies enough to enlist his gratitude in any one year, or circumstance of his exile and pilgrimage, and doubtless he reviewed each and all particularly; but in his speech he comprehended all in a general mention of them, and summed them up, and demonstrated them by pointing to their effect. “Now I am become two bands.” Review your past mercies, consider how God has been with you at all times, and has ever been doing you good. Call to mind what progress you have been able to make spiritual or temporal; what success has attended you; what friends have been given you; what dangers you have narrowly escaped; what sicknesses recovered from; what wounds been healed, what troubles overcome, what tears staunched. Have they not caused you, like Jacob, to increase from the solitariness and poverty of that passing over Jordan, to the riches and prosperity of the two bands? Perhaps you say, you cannot trace such progress; you are much the same outwardly and inwardly, as you have been from the time that you can first remember. Then, brethren, you can furnish your own testimony, that God has dealt better with you than He did with Jacob, that your first state, your continued state has been all like his last. O discern and bless God for those least heeded but greatest mercies, the mercies which come to us at the beginning, and follow us all the days of our life—the continued prosperity of our family, the continued harmony and love, the bread always sure, the right understanding early implanted, the fear of the Lord from our youth. There is a way of travelling in our days which is so smooth, that often we cannot tell that we are moving; and there is a manner of blessing, so uninterrupted, so uniform, so without roughnesses and stoppages and ups and downs, that if we be not on the lookout, we may fancy that we are not blessed at all. Let not this be your case. Do not refuse to be grateful, because all goes well with you, because there is nothing that needs to be supplied, because nothing is taken away from you. Rather, let the measure of your blessedness be also the measure of your praise and the strength of your resolution. “Surely goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”
But your object, perhaps, “Mine has not been this life of uninterrupted prosperity, but, on the contrary, one of continued adversity. It is Jacob’s first, not his last estate, that has been always mine.” What do you mean? That you were not born rich, nor influential, nor of honoured family? That you have not the wisdom of the philosopher, the dignity of the prince, the opulence of the successful merchant, the leisure of independent private life? That may be. Your state may be the reverse of all this, and yet be the state of the “two bands.” External prosperity in Jacob’s time was commonly, yet not always, the sign of spiritual blessings; in Gospel days, with our better light, and greater power of appreciation of the reality, the sign is not so often afforded, frequently the most favoured are without it; yea, and often it abides with the unblessed as the mocking substitute for true blessedness. If you are without God in the world; if you do not feel Him about your bed, and about your path; if you do not live in His fear, and hope for His mercies, and His rewards; if the thought of Him does not moderate your worldly joy, and direct your aims, and leaven your worldly work; if His comfort does not dry your tears, His strength support you, His grace sanctify you, then—no matter what your outward state, and your possessions, your powers, your happiness—you are poor and unblessed. But if He is thus with you in all your ways, if you have resolved, and are keeping the resolution, “The Lord shall be my God,” then is yours the state, or it is growing towards the state of the “two bands.” One more objection somewhat akin to this last, must be answered. There are some who say, “Mine was once the state of the two bands: it has long since been—or it is fast becoming—solitariness and the single staff. All thing are against me. Nothing that I put my hand to seems to prosper; I come into misfortune; the fountains of joy are dried up; my hope, my stay, are taken from me. When I look back upon the past, I look as it were up an incline down which I have rolled, or towards a pinnacle whence I have been cast down.” Now, of course, my brethren, all this may be the result of the displeasure of God, consequent upon your sin, or neglect of Him. Outward adversity is sometimes the effect of His wrath, sometimes it is the chastisement of displeasure, and the discipline of correction. If then in your heart, you know that you deserve such wrath, or need such correction (even then it is a blessing, and you ought to praise God for it, but still) you may be sure that it is the mark of disapprobation, something for you to grieve over, and seek to have removed. But if the testimony of your conscience is that you walk with God, then are these so-called reverses very blessings, not declines but advances, not hindrances but helps, tokens of God’s love upraisings of you towards heaven. Oh be like Jacob; count all mercy, get rid of selfishness, and meditate as he did, and you will prove that all is mercy, and proclaim it! You will find, for instance, that the loss of wealth took away with it the idol of your worship, the minister of your excessive pleasure; that altered position broke down your pride; that worldly sorrow led you to seek heavenly comfort; that the perfidy of so-called friends made you cease to put your trust in man, and caused you to rely on the friend that sticketh closer than a brother; that sickness and infirmity reminded you of death, and stimulated you to preparation for judgment; that the loss of those you loved, uprooted your clingings to earth, linked you to heaven, revealed to you One whom you knew not; Whom above all you ought to love; Who is better to you than sons and daughters; Who is the true and abiding Father of the fatherless, and God of the widow. No matter what your circumstances, how many your troubles, I tell you on the authority of God’s Word, that if you love Him, they all work together for your good; yea, they are all good in themselves. You will find them so, if you rightly review them, and each of you will be able to say, as truthfully as Jacob did, with much more meaning, because of your better knowledge and superior blessedness in Christ, “I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies and of all the truth, which Thou hast showed unto my servant . . . I am become two bands.”
Try to feel this, brethren, and to express it this night to God; to tell out your praises for the mercies of your past life, and, in the review of them, to pledge yourselves to Him, that you will strive henceforth to recognise blessings more quickly, to use them better, to be more grateful for them. Be these the thoughts and vows with which you consecrate the last hours of a dying year. But, knowing that so soon as you set out again, your enemy, whom sin has given the advantage over you, will come to meet you, to smite you, to turn you back from the Holy Land, forget not this night to cry, “Deliver me, I pray Thee, O Lord. Take away from me the sin which exposes me to assaults, which makes me vulnerable. Give me Thy strength: go before me with thy blessing.” Do this, brethren, persevere in it day after day, night after night: wrestle with God, refuse to let Him go—you shall surely prevail: God will yield all you ask; and, in honour of your victory, He will change your name from Jacob to Israel, that is, you shall no longer be remembered by the name of your deceit and your sin. You shall be known, known to angels, known to Him, as princes, and prevailers with God.