Jeremiah 28:16

This year thou shalt die.

Thoughts on death

1. Let men live ever so many years, some one year will be the year of their death.

2. Every year is a year of death to many; there never was a year since the abbreviation of human life, since the extensive propagation and dispersion of mankind over all countries on the face of the earth, which has not been a year of death to tens of thousands,

3. Last year was a year of death to very many.

4. This year, very probably, will be a year of death to some of us. This or the other tree may be cut down; this or the other branch may be lopt off, and fall to the ground. Let us see then that we be ready, that if cut down, it may be in mercy, not in wrath; that if plucked up by the root and transplanted, it may be to be transplanted in a far better soil, where the air is more genial, where the fruits are always ripe.

5. No one of us knows but God may be saying to him or her, “This year thou shalt die.” Futurity is wisely hid from man; we know not the year or day of our death we need therefore constantly to watch.

6. It may be in mercy or in wrath that God is saying to this or the other one, “This year thou shalt die.” It was in wrath that this was said to Hananiah.

7. The year of one’s death is a most eventful year to him. This dissolves our connection with the present world; it issues us into the world of spirits. If we are the Lord’s people, it associates us with God, Christ, angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect in the state of glory and blessedness.

8. There is no outliving the appointed year of one’s death. No distinction of rank, no worldly pre-eminence, no degree of riches, influence, or power, no plea of necessity, no supposed usefulness in civil or sacred society, can prevent death.

9. The year of one’s death may come very unexpectedly. (Anon.)

Solemn thoughts

I. This sentence is doubtless expressive of the decision of God concerning many this year.

1. The page of history affords no record of a single year in which death desisted from his work of destruction.

2. The last year of many is now commended.

3. Various are the means by Which God’s design will be executed.

II. No individual can be certain that this does not express God’s decision concerning himself.

1. Utterly impossible for us to know who are, or are not, included in God’s appointments.

2. The circumstances of some render it most probable that this year will be their last.

3. Doubtless those who think least of death, and confidently reckon on future years, will find this sentence fulfilled.

III. It is the duty and interest of all to use wisely the gracious hours they enjoy.

1. What is it to die? To pass from this state of being into the immediate presence of our Maker and Judge.

2. Am I prepared to die?

3. Begin the year with earnest preparation. (J. Bunter.)

A sermon on the New Year

It is highly probable, that if some prophet, like Jeremiah, should open to us the book of the Divine decrees, one or other of us would there see our sentence, and the time of its execution fixed, “Thus saith the Lord, This year thou shalt die.” There some of us would find it written, “This year thou shalt enjoy a series of prosperity, to try if the goodness of God will lead thee to repentance.” Others might read this melancholy line, “This year shall be to thee a series of afflictions: this year thou shalt lose thy dearest earthly support and comfort; this year thou shalt pine away with sickness, or agonise with torturing pain, to try if the kind severities of a Father’s rod will reduce thee to thy duty. Others, I hope, would road the gracious decree, “This year, thy stubborn spirit, after long resistance, shall be sweetly constrained to bow to the despised Gospel of Christ. This year shalt thou be born a child of God, and an heir of happiness, which the revolution of years shall never, never, terminate.” Others perhaps would read this tremendous doom, “This year My Spirit so long resisted, shall cease to strive with thee; this year I will give thee up to thine own heart’s lusts, and swear in My wrath thou shalt not enter into My rest.” Others would probably find the doom of the false prophet Hananiah pronounced against them: “Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will cast thee from off the face of the earth: this year thou shalt die.”

I. This year you may die.

1. Your life is the greatest uncertainty in the world.

2. Thousands have died since the last New Year’s Day; and this year will be of the same kind with the last; the duration of mortals; a time to die.

3. Thousands of others will die: it is certain they will, and why may not you?

4. Though you are young; for the regions of the dead have been crowded with persons of your age; and no age is the least security against the stroke of death.

5. Though you are now in health and your constitution seems to promise a long life; for thousands of such will be hurried into the eternal world this year, as they have been in years past.

6. Though you are full of business, though you have projected many schemes, which it may be the work of years to execute, and which afford you many bright and flattering prospects.

7. Though you have not yet finished your education, nor fixed in life, but are preparing to appear in the world, and perhaps elated with the prospect of the figure you will make in it.

8. Though you are not prepared for it.

9. Though you deliberately delay your preparation, and put it off to some future time.

10. Though you are unwilling to admit the thought. Death does not slacken his pace towards you, because you hate him, and are afraid of his approach.

11. Though you may strongly hope the contrary, and flatter yourself with the expectation of a length of years.

II. What if you should? If you should die this year, then all your doubts, all the anxieties of blended hopes and fears about your state and character will terminate for ever in full conviction. If you are impenitent sinners, all the artifices of self-flattery will be able to make you hope better things no longer; but the dreadful discovery will flash upon you with the resistless blaze of intuitive evidence. You will see, you will feel yourselves such. This year you may die: and should you die this year, you will be for ever cut off from all the pleasures of life. Then an everlasting farewell to all the mirth, the tempting amusements and vain delights of youth. Farewell to all the pleasures you derive from the senses, and all the gratifications of appetite. Then farewell to all the pompous but empty pleasures of riches and honours. The pleasures both of enjoyment and expectation from this quarter will fail for ever. But this is not all If you should die this year, you will have no pleasures, no enjoyments to substitute for those you will lose. Your capacity and eager thirst for happiness will continue, nay, will grow more strong and violent in that improved adult state of your nature. And yet you will have no good, real or imaginary, to satisfy it; and consequently the capacity of happiness will become a capacity of misery; and the privation of pleasure will be positive pain. If you die this year, you will not only be cut off from all the flattering prospects of this life, but from all hope entirely, and for ever. If you die in your sins, you will be fixed in an unchangeable state of misery; a state that will admit of no expectation but that of uniform, or rather ever-growing misery; a state that excludes all hopes of making a figure, except as the monuments of the vindictive justice of God, and the deadly effects of sin.

III. Is it possible to escape this impending danger?

1. Your case is not yet desperate, unless you choose to make it so; that is, unless you choose to persist in carelessness and impenitence, as you have hitherto done.

2. You all know that prayer, reading, and hearing the Word of God, meditation upon Divine things, free conference with such as have been taught by experience to direct you in this difficult work; you all know, I say, that these are the means instituted for your conversion: and if you had right views of things, and a just temper towards them, you would hardly need instruction or the least persuasion to make use of them. (S. Davies, D. D.).