“Everyone of us shall give
account of himself to God.” Romans 14:12
O GOD, OUR HELP IN AGES PAST, OUR HOPE FOR YEARS
TO COME: By Thine undeserved mercy we have come to the last day of this
year. For twelve long months of strife and sorrow Thou hast protected
us and granted repeated victories to our armies and navies. As we
review the year, we confess that we are in no wise worthy of the
blessings, national and individual, which Thou hast showered upon us,
for we have sinned daily, ungratefully, and grievously. Therefore we
come before Thee contritely to plead that before the year closes, Thou
wouldst teach us all to know that through faith in the newborn Savior,
Thy Son, we have full and free forgiveness of al lour transgressions
and can enter the New Year as Thy redeemed and restored children! We
implore the Holy Spirit’s presence as we approach this milestone, which
marks the passing of another twelve months, and ask this divine
Comforter to fill our hearts with trusting, Christ-centered
faith. Make the coming year a period of peace and true progress for us!
Guide the President, the Congress, and all in authority into the paths
that please Thee! Continue Thy loving care for Thy children in the
armed forces! Keep them from harm of body as well as from spiritual
injury; and, Father, bring them back to us soon! O Thou, who with the
Son and the Spirit alone art our true God, help us end the old year and
begin the new in the name of Jesus, our only, but all-sufficient
Redeemer! Amen!
An ancient story tells of a man who was
constantly afraid that Death would overtake him suddenly and find him
unprepared. So he made a bargain with the Grim Reaper, stipulating that
Death would give him clear, repeated notices before he came. One day,
however, unannounced and altogether unexpectedly, the Destroyer
appeared to demand the life of his amazed, trembling victim. “How could
you break your pledge?” Slowly the skeletal figure replied: “How about
your failing eyesight, your dimmed sense of hearing, your gray and
falling fair, your lost teeth, your furrowed face, your bent body, your
dwindling powers, your weakened memory? Were these not unmistakable
warnings?”
Why do I speak of death, when at midnight tonight
laughter, light, and life will reign, with celebration, singing and
shouting? In all this carnival I remind you on the last day of a dying
year—and this is no ancient fable, but a modern truth—that God Himself
now gives every one of you a personal, pointed warning that another
milestone in your life has passed; that you are twelve months closer to
your end, 366 days nearer the grave; that for many of you this may be
the last full year of your existence. In all the gaiety which reigns in
our country with the coming of a new year, few people realize how
steadily and swiftly they are approaching their end. Listen to this
bell toll! Before it rings again in fifteen seconds, over the face of a
war-torn world (and this startling figure does not include those who
fall in battle), thirty men and women, young and old, will have
breathed their dying breath. Listen to the bell again as it taps out
the measure of its dirge! Every time it rings, each half-second, death
has claimed a new victim. As you hear this steady tattoo, remind
yourself that though we may sigh as we prepare to tear the last leaf
from the calendar, we cannot relive a single moment! Every day the
group of men and women carried to their last resting place is larger
than the population of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Each week a mass of
humanity greater than the number of people in Saint Louis is wiped out.
As you realize how quickly the past year has
taken wings to fly away forever and understand how unexpectedly your
farewell to life may come, is it not the highest wisdom and prudence to
be prepared for that departure? If business, industry, finance close
their books and take annual inventory on the last day of the last
months, is it not far more necessary for us, our country and its
institutions, on this final Sunday, to engage in spiritual stocktaking?
How all important that we heed the Lord’s plain direction, chosen as
the text for the closing message this year, the words of Saint Paul in
Romans, chapter fourteen, verse twelve, “Everyone of us shall give
account of himself to God,” and believe that the Almighty asks each of
us:
GIVE ACCOUNT OF YOURSELF!
See whether you can balance the book of your
life! List your liabilities, your sin, your sorrows, and then find—this
is my New Year’s wish for you—the assets of a victorious faith, the
overbalance of the Savior’s grace and the removal of all your
indebtedness through the price Jesus paid for you!
1 OUR COUNTRY MUST GIVE ACCOUNT OF ITSELF
Note that the Apostle begins, “EVERYONE OF US
SHALL give account of himself to God”! Whether we like it or not, just
as sure as this old year gives way to the new, “everyone of us” must
stand before the Maker at His appointed hour to review life in the
light of His sacred Word. Human law exempts some men from going to war,
paying taxes, facing court trials, and a dozen other responsibilities;
but no one is rich enough, smart enough, powerful enough, to secure a
release from this rigid requirement: “Everyone of us shall give account
of himself to God.” Politicians have thwarted justice; Nazi fugitives
from war prison camps this moment are hiding in the Arizona desert; but
no man has ever been able to run away from the Lord. In the scandals
revealed last week when American soldiers and French accomplices were
found guilty of stealing Army gasoline, United States military courts
sentenced a guilty American private to life imprisonment, while French
courts fined the civilian who worked with him only a few dollars; but
the Almighty is not thus partial. Men of all nationalities, climes, and
colors stand before Him on the same level, destined to be summoned
before His judgment. Husbands may deceive their wives, and wives may be
secretly unfaithful to their husbands; employers and employees may
cheat each other, but none of you can conceal anything from the
all-seeing eyes of Him who beholds everything and reads even the
records of your heart. Clever criminals may try to avoid giving an
account of themselves before human courts. The president of a New York
corporation stole $40,000, permitted his secretary to be accused, and
then, last week, plunged to death from the ninth floor of his hotel
suite; yet that suicide—as all men—has to stand before the tribunal of
eternity. Here, then is the unavoidable, inescapable, inevitable truth:
“Everyone of us shall give account of himself to God.” When the time of
this divine hearing is set, unlike many modern court trials changed
from one date to another, there will be no postponement or delay.
How necessary that we in the United States
understand clearly that our country must “ give account of” itself “to
God.” Indeed, because we have been blessed above other peoples, the
demand for our accounting may come the more quickly and be more
exacting. Where in this wide nation of forty-eight States, many of them
individually larger than any European nation except Russia, has a
single city been demolished by enemy planes? Where a factory destroyed
by robot bombs, a home shattered by bock busters? Actually we are
building entirely new communities, comfortable houses for workers,
tremendous plants. Where do children rummage through garbage pails as
Italian waifs and orphans dig through the refuse of our Army kitchens?
American babies today are the best fed in history. Where do American
boys and girls drop dead from hunger as they do in a dozen
famine-cursed lands? Our infant mortality rate has dropped in the last
years. Where are our lads, fourteen and fifteen years old, torn from
their home and thrown into the whirlpool of bloody war as they are in
scores of countries across the seas? Our children go to school, play
basketball, attend holiday parties, wear their new, warm Christmas
clothing. Who, excepting our soldiers, their parents, wives, little
ones, sweethearts, has made a real self-denying sacrifice? Most
Americans are earning more money then ever before. This year has
witnessed the all-time high in national income of $159,000,000.000,
with savings at the record figure of $36,000,000,000, while hundreds of
millions of Europe and Asia are impoverished and bankrupt. Add all the
other privileges which we enjoy but which masses in war-wrecked nations
abroad have never known, and you will join me when I say that our
beloved country, blessed in a signal, unparalleled manner above other
nations, should give the Almighty an account which recognizes His
marvelous mercy.
Can we give such account for the dying year? One
hundred sixty-eight years ago tomorrow, George Washington raised the
first American flag over his camp in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Does
that flag today stand for a humble, penitent, Christ-exalting,
Bible-loving land, which, never defeated in war and victorious in the
present struggle should be close to the Lord? I list as the first of
our liabilities, America’s neglect of Jesus Christ. A few days ago the
editors of the Associated Press newspapers named the twenty-one biggest
news stories of the past year; but in the entire list not one event was
of religious significance or of Christian background. If only as a
result of true spiritual revival during the last twelve months the
United States had accounted for itself in headlines like” “America
Turns to Jesus!” “Widespread Daily Bible Reading in Our Homes!” “More
Sunday schools and Parish Schools Established, All of Them Crowded!”
“Churches Working Overtime with Additional Services and Packed
Congregations!”
America’s second liability is the failure of many
leaders to accept Christ. Sir William Dobbie, defender of Malta, told
an English audience: “I haven’t come all this way to speak to you of
the heroism of Malta…. I have come to you to speak of the Lord Jesus
and His faithfulness to me, since I first gave my heart to Him.” I know
that we have Christian generals in the United States. One of them has
been connected with this broadcast; but we need many more leaders, both
military and civil, who will speak out heroically for the Savior.
The third liability for which we must give
account before God is the sin connected with war, the gain of money
some achieve while soldiers lose their lives. Abraham Lincoln is
quoted in a ballad as saying that he was troubled in making some
aspects of the Civil War and God’s Word agree. I, too, have found
difficulty in trying to make every aspect of this World War harmonize
with divine truth. I cannot picture Jesus, the Son of God, who
laid down His life to save men, rejoicing when civilians, children and
mothers, the aged and the infirm are destroyed by bombs. I can
never make the starvation of babies, even Japanese, agree with Christ’s
appeal, “Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them
not!” I refuse to believe that the Savior of men is pleased with the
destruction of churches. I deny most emphatically that the
Almighty looks with favor on the spread of atheism.
America’s fourth liability is violence and crime.
The closing year has been a period of strikes and business seizure,
violence and murder, blasphemy and profanity, hatred and cursing.
America’s fifth liability is the breakdown of the
home, the increase of unfaithfulness, divorce, illegitimacy, the
tragedy of unwanted children. Listen to these voices of protest
from one city, Chicago: The director of the Juvenile protective
Association there laments “a tremendous and terrible increase in child
desertion and neglect.” The Secretary of the Child Welfare Division of
the Council of Social Agencies bemoans “a complete breakdown in wartime
family life.” An official of the United Home Finding Service declares,
“We have 2,000 babies and children who need foster homes; more are
coming in every day.” A domestic relations court judge charges:
“Cheating by GI wives is rising rapidly. It is moral sabotage on the
home front.”
America’s sixth liability is the ignorance of
Scripture truth and of God’s way to salvation in Christ. Reports show
that many of our high-school children do not know the Ten Commandments,
the Lord’s prayer, and similar basic passages of Scripture. How can we
expect to keep the Almighty with us unless our youth is indoctrinated
in the Gospel? Well does J. Edgar Hoover warn: “I am not easily shocked
or alarmed, but today, like thousands of others, I am both shocked and
alarmed. The arrest of teen-age boys and girls is staggering; the
country is in deadly peril. We can win this war and still lose our
freedom for all America.”
The seventh American liability is the widespread
determination to build the future without the Almighty. Before he
entered the State Department, Archilbald MacLeish told a New York City
audience: “The peace we seem to be making will be a peace of oil, a
peace of gold, a peace of shipping, a peace…without purpose or human
intent, a peace of dicker and trade about the fact of commerce, the
facts of banking, the facts of transportation, which will lead us where
the treaties made by dicker and trade have always led us.” Others of,
of course, predict boom and the end of all wars, but how regularly have
such prophecies miscarried! We have been told that the war would end in
1943. How little attention is paid to God’s promise of help: “If My
people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray,
and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; THEN will I hear
from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
The deep-rooted difficulty lies in the tragedy
that many in our country proudly avoid repentance. On Friday I received
this telegram:” Another effort was recently made by Philadelphia
Christians to persuade Washington to call a day of prayer but without
success. In view of the grave situation in Europe and the great
need in our own land, it is our conviction that there should be a day
of humiliation and prayer, when Christian people all over the land will
spend time, as the Lord leads, on their faces before God, crying for
forgiveness in Jesus and beseeching an outpouring of His Spirit on our
land and armed forces.” Heroically these men, despite official
disfavor, lead for a day of national repentance! How lamentable that it
has not been granted! The longer this day of conviction that there
should be a day of humiliation and prayer, when Christian people all
over the land will spend time, as the Lord leads, on their faces before
God, crying for forgiveness in Jesus and beseeching an outpouring of
His Spirit on our land and armed forces,” Heroically these men, despite
official disfavor, plead for a day of national repentance! How
lamentable that it has not been granted! The longer this day of
contrition is withheld, the more ardently believers themselves should
repent and plead with our authorities to remember that, according to
Hebrews 13:17, every leader in governmental position must “give account
of himself to God.” In past crises a small group of Christians has
often proved itself “the salt of the earth.” The Holy Sprit grant
that today many of you will humbly approach the Lord Jesus to confess
your sins and our national failures! Work and pray so that our country
heeds the cry: America, turn to Christ!
2 OUR CHURCHES MUST GIVE ACCOUNT OF THEMSELVES
Our churches, which should take the lead in
bringing and keeping our people with the Almighty, are likewise
included in the ultimatum of our text, “Everyone of us shall give
account of himself to God.” During the past year Christian groups
should have testified courageously to the only Hope a war-racked world
can ever have, the only Comfort burdened, distressed men and women can
ever know, the only Pardon and peace sin-stained souls can ever
receive, Jesus, the divine Mediator between heaven and earth. Yet I ask
you in all sincerity, have you noticed any marked upswing of religious
devotion, such as we might expect after then millions of our youth have
been drafted for the nation’s defense? Thank God, more Bibles were
distributed from coast to coast last year then ever previously; but has
the contradiction of Scripture, the denial of our Savior’s atonement,
the rejection of His deity been banished from those American pulpits
which long before the war forsook the Almighty and His Word? I have
never heard of even one Modernist preacher, teacher or leader whom this
conflict has led to disavow his opposition to Christ. There may have
been some—pray God there were!—but I charge that unbelief and the
sabotage of our Gospel treasures are more firmly entrenched in the
United States today, with all the wild spending and the rampant
materialism of this age, than before the war. The letters you send me
reveal that many go to church on Sunday to hear an harangue of hatred,
or a crossless, bloodless, Bible-less talk which flatters people into
believing how good they are—a sermon which preaches sin—not ours, of
course, but our enemies’, which mentions the Lord but omits His son,
without whom we can do nothing.
Is it any wonder, then, in a country with more
churches than any other, with the most sweeping religious freedom
history has ever known, with no government or Gestapo dictating
spiritual policy, with Church and State constitutionally separated,
that despite these advantages, despite the urgent appeal voiced by the
war to get right with God, some denomination, as they give account of
themselves at the close of the year, must report a decrease in
attendance and membership? An official of a large Protestant body
recently stated that in New Jersey the annual average gain for its 412
churches was 1.37 members. The entire denomination, with its 8,600
congregations, showed a new loss of 4,247 members throughout the United
States. Others groups report a gain of 2 percent, 3 percent, 4
percent—hardly large enough to make up for their decline through death.
What a supertragedy that at a time when the house
of God should be overcrowded, many o them are losing ground and thus
strengthening the armies of atheism which will mobilize to march over
the world after the war! The reason for this decline? Once more I give
it to you, so that you who love the Lord Jesus can stop the betrayal of
the Savior wherever it seeks entrance into your circles: the failure of
man-made religions to comfort, guide, and sustain! The bankruptcy of
all Christless creeds! The emptiness of all Scriptureless sermons! The
hopelessness of all churches, be they ever so large, wealthy,
influential, widely publicized, attractively built, gorgeously
decorated, which question, reject, and even ridicule the redemption
Jesus earned for the world through His agonizing death on Calvary!
Where is the remedy, the cure, for weakened,
collapsing churches? Certainly not in mergers and interdenominational
councils seeking to control American church life, keep broadcasts like
ours off the air, and spread the social gospel which is as far from
Christ’s Gospel as Hitler is from George Washington! No, we need
churches built on the Rock of Ages, the unchangeable Word, the
Redeemer’s full and free grace, His deity, and His complete atonement;
churches where membership means all-out allegiance to our Lord,
battling against sin, striving for a consecrated life; churches which
work especially among the poor, the sick, the sorrowing and refuse to
be called millionaires’ congregations; churches which do not look for
the most fashionable locations, but are ready to center their
activities among working people; churches which think more of inward
spiritual adornment than of imposing architecture; churches which
devote their energies not particularly to social pastimes but to
spiritual endeavors; churches with preachers “determined not to know
anything…save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified,” servants of God, not
servants of men; churches with worshipers whose life and actions bear
the stamp of the Redeemer, who are eager to have their children brought
up in daily Scriptural instruction, who want their homes to re-echo
Jesus’ love and the joy of peace which comes through; churches which
are supported not merely by the pennies remaining after the dollars
have been spent in the greatest wave of luxury-buying the United States
has ever known, but by the generous outpouring of vast sums of
missionary purposes! We must have Christian groups like this if the
United States is to counteract the menace of materialism and the
inroads of atheism which the period of peace can surely bring; churches
which will help give our country a real revival, a twentieth-century
reformation, the mightiest Gospel offensive since the days of Luther
and the age of the Apostles. In our Savior’s name I invite you who love
the Lord to pray, believe, and work so that the weak, anemic, dying
churches in the land be revitalized and wholly dedicated to Jesus.
American churches turn to Christ!
3 EVERYONE OF US MUST GIVE AN ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF
The last day of the year also has a personal
appeal. When we read Saint Paul’s declaration, “Everyone of us shall
give an account of himself to God.” May we realize that December 31 is
spiritual stocktaking time for each of us individually! Today you and I
should ask ourselves: How have we spent the year? Have we lived
blameless, unselfish, righteous lives? Have our thoughts always dwelt
on the pure, honest, helpful? Have our eyes always looked to the clean,
the decent, the noble, the exalted? Have our hands been engaged in
constructive work for God, our country, our fellow men, our homes,
ourselves?
If we are honest—and we cannot conceal our
liabilities from the Almighty who knows us better than we know
ourselves—we must admit that every day of the past 365 has been marked
by impulses or actions, words or deeds, which are against the Lord,
hostile to our neighbors, and contrary to our own salvation. You, the
smug and self-sufficient, who want to close this year with a feeling of
satisfaction because you have made more money, enjoyed more pleasures
during these twelve months of war than ever before, and who now laugh
at evil or sanctimoniously thank God that you are better than mother
men, drip all pretenses! Throw away hypocrisy! Admit to the Holy Spirit
that you, as everyone born into this world, are laden with inherited
guilt and actual, committed sin! Confess to your Maker during the few
hours left before the new year dawns that you have indeed sinned
grievously, repeatedly, rebelliously, in actions, utterances, and
emotions, through hatred, envy, malice, covetousness, lust, and selfish
ambitions! Concede, some of you, that you have spent the entire
year in occupations which have dishonored the Lord, distressed your
fellow men, and disgraced yourselves! You, the proud infidels, without
God and against Him, know that you are under His condemnation, doomed
to the hell which modern unbelief glibly ridicules, but which will
produce “weeping and gnashing of teeth” when you realize, “We must all
appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive
the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it
is good or bad.”
If this were all I could tell you, how desperate
these last moments of the old year would be and how hopeless the first
day of the new! Thank heaven with however, that whenever you must give
an account of yourself, you can turn to the heavenly Representative,
the Mediator and Friend at the celestial court, Jesus Christ, God’s
Son, your Redeemer! Here is the promise by which you can face the
Almighty, repel the charges of your own conscience, reject Satan’s
accusation—this sweeping, all-inclusive pledge of pardon: “If any man,
sin, we have an Advocate” (an Attorney, a Defender) “with the Father,
Jesus Christ the Righteous; and He is the Propitiation” (that means the
Atonement, the Pardon) “for our sins; and not for ours only, but also
for the sins of the whole world.” There you have life and salvation,
the assurance of forgiveness for all your transgressions. Press every
drop of comfort you can from this sacred pledge, if you have fallen
into fearful sin. Then in that awful moment which summons you before
the bar of divine justice, when you realize that you cannot give God an
account of yourself, that you are completely condemned, cling to your
Attorney as you pray,
In the hour of trial,
Jesus, plead for me
And the Savior who promises, “Him that cometh to
Me I will in no wise cast out,” whose mercies “are new every morning,”
who appealed even for His crucifiers, and who laid down His life, so
that you could be restored to God and assured of eternal blessing, the
precious, sinless, compassionate, and all-powerful Son of God, will
arise to plead in your behalf and, pointing to you, say: “Rather, Thou
dist send Me to redeem him. I was born at Bethlehem as his Savior, I
was crucified at Calvary transferring his transgressions to Myself,
bearing his iniquities in My own body. I died on the cross to give him
heaven and its endless blessing.” Justified by this glorious grace, you
can declare: “O God, U must give you this account of myself:
Nothing in my and I bring,
Simply to His cross I cling.
Yet since there is ‘no condemnation to them which
are in Christ Jesus’’ and I am in Christ; according to Thy promise, my
sins have been washed away, my guilt concealed, my debt paid, the
charges against me removed forever.” As you give utterance to this
confidence, your heavenly Father will take the large, heavy volume in
which the charges against you are listed and write across each page:
“Paid in full! Forgiven completely! Removed entirely, all by faith in
My Son’s atoning love”; and then He will hand you the title to your
prepared place in the many mansions of His heavenly house.
As the year closes, I tell you: Jesus wants you;
He loves you; He came for you, lived for you, died for you, rose again
for you, ascended to heaven for you, reigns eternally for you, so that
by the indwelling of His Holy Spirit you, born again, can throw off
your old sins, vices, evil habits at the end of the old year and, as
the new year dawns, become a new man, saved by grace, reborn “by water
and the Spirit,” restored to your heavenly Father.
Who knows what the months ahead will bring If we
face facts, not wishful thinking, and are guided by stern reality, not
by romantic wishes, we are driven to conclude that the year before us
has all the signs of reaching a new high in human suffering. Those who
predicted a list of a million casualties were laughed to scorn at the
beginning of the war, but this ridicule may turn to realization. It may
be—how reluctant I am to mention this, yet how definitely I know the
Lord leads me to say it—that before the total most of the war is
completely computed, your sons, husbands, fathers, brothers, may be
listed among the missing or killed. A hundred other sorrows may
surround you, increasing even past burdens. No one can foretell the
things to come, not all the fortunetellers and spiritist mediums in the
world, not the 400 Ouija boards sold every day in the city of Chicago.
Yet if we have Christ, we can declare with Job, “God ‘knoweth the way
that I take,’” and gain the assurance which wealth, power, culture
alone can never give, namely, that the reverses and rejections of our
hopes, loss of money, health, friendship, home, happiness, even
death-marked telegrams from Washington or our own departure from
life—for who knows how many of us will live through the year? — cannot
dim this radiant truth: All the trials and afflictions we may have to
endure are to strengthen our faith, promote our blessing, and prepare
us for the joy of heaven.
Take heart, therefore, you for whom the dying
year has been a succession of sorrows! If you have Jesus, you can say,
“Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,” and find in your sufferings the
token and assurance of Christ’s devotion to your soul. Rejoice, because
you are a year closer to heaven, a year nearer your Savior and your
departed loved ones who have preceded you in the faith! Find radiant
happiness in the fact that, come what may, as long as you cling to the
Son of God during the year ahead, you will have joy, peace, strength,
salvation and the pledge of eternal life even now!
On New Year’s Day, 1815, the British attacked New
Orleans, and a long, heavy struggle raged before they were defeated.
Yet this occurred weeks after peace had been declared and before the
news could be brought across the ocean. For the sake of your soul,
during the days ahead don’t try to battle alone against the
overwhelming forces of evil when peace and victory have already been
decisively won for you by God’s Son! Rather, stop resisting the Holy
Spirit, and give yourself wholly to your Redeemer! At the top of any
New Year’s resolution you may make, write these words, “Father, I have
resolved that I will give an account of myself by pointing to my
Savory’s suffering in my stead, His death for my life, His atonement
for my sins. Thy Spirit guiding me, I promise to be Thine by living
Christ and loving Christ, by preaching Christ and teaching Christ, by
beginning and ending each day with Christ! So help me God!” Amen!
The Preceding Lutheran Hour sermon first aired on December
31, 1944.