Promises of God Encourage Us to Pray

The point: Pray that God will cause His word, as it is preached, to burn like fire in every heart and for none to sit without feeling its hammer blows.

Martin uses the metaphor from Jeremiah 23:29 to describe the powerful, searing, and pulverizing effect of God's word on hearts and sin, setting the stage for prayer for its impact.

Is not my word like unto fire, and like unto a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? If God himself likens his word to fire that burns, fire that one cannot touch without feeling it, to a powerful sixteen-pound sledgehammer that sends shivers through solid rock and smashes it into little piles of dust at one's feet, then surely it is not wrong for us to pray that God will cause his word, as it is preached this morning, to burn like fire. Fire in every heart, and that none will sit here without feeling the hammer blows of the word of the living God. Let us pray and ask him to make that true in...

0:22 - 1:18 Read in full sermon

The point: Recognize and engage with the divinely instituted means of grace as essential for spiritual growth, rather than ignoring them or devising human substitutes.

This analogy illustrates that just as the body cannot be nourished by sawdust, the soul cannot be nourished by ignoring or devising substitutes for God's appointed means of grace.

And I hope it has not been tedious, but helped all of you to get things into perspective, as well as assist those visiting with us. We are considering this fifth principle now of a balanced teaching on the Christian life, that there are no effective substitutes for the divinely appointed means of grace in living the Christian life. No effective substitutes for the divinely appointed means of grace in living the Christian life. In consideration of that principle, we define the means of grace as those divinely designated activities, disciplines, and relationships by which God nourishes and stren...

21:57 - 22:50 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The smell of God's promises ought to allure us and encourage us to come with liberty and boldness, and I say it reverently, with spiritual salivating to the throne of grace, believing that God waits to hear and to answer…

This extended analogy vividly portrays how the promises of God should allure and encourage believers to prayer, just as the smell of a favorite meal entices a hungry, hard-working man to the dinner table.

I originally had chosen the word entice. I looked it up in my synonym finder and all of its synonyms showed it was a good word, but because of its connotation so often with respect to a negative entice, the enticement of an immoral man or woman of another human being, I've used the word allure and I hope it does not carry that connotation, but I cannot be robbed of a word that's in that ballpark of nuance. The promises of God allure, entice, and encourage us to avail ourselves of the privilege of prayer. The promises of God should be to ourselves, not to our own souls, what the smells of a hea...

26:37 - 27:42 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The smell of God's promises ought to allure us and encourage us to come with liberty and boldness, and I say it reverently, with spiritual salivating to the throne of grace, believing that God waits to hear and to answer…

This brief analogy highlights that if God's promises don't draw a believer to prayer, it's a sign of spiritual deadness, as a dead man cannot respond to the smell of food.

and make you long to come to the table of prayer, it's because you're spiritually dead. Hold the smells of the most delightful meal under the nose of a dead man, and there won't be a drop of saliva coming from his mouth. What a promise! Delight thyself in the Lord.

30:45 - 31:08 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin quotes Thomas Watson on applying special promises to special cases and references Spurgeon's 'Faith's Checkbook' to illustrate how believers should 'cash in' God's…

Martin quotes Watson's counsel to 'apply special promises to special cases in prayer' and to 'unite' commands and promises, emphasizing that this renders prayer victorious and obedience pleasant.

I marvel at how, of the exceeding great and precious promises of God, I plead before the Lord. I'm grieved when I can go through prayer meetings with you, my brethren, and sometimes barely hear a specific promise pleaded before God. Holding God to his words is what you have said. In a lovely book that the bookstore is carrying, a reprint of an old work by Thomas Watson and Samuel Lee called The Bible and the Closet.

43:18 - 44:01 Read in full sermon

The point: Consciously, personally endorse God's promises by faith and prayer, 'cashing them in' at the bank of heaven.

The story of Simeon in Luke 2 is used as an example of someone who lived and died 'sweetly in the arms of a promise,' illustrating the sustaining power of God's word.

And he says there's the principle. We are warranted to dig into the promises of God and to extract them and to apply them to our situation. And then this beautiful statement, Simeon, remember the old man who lived in the temple? Recorded in Luke chapter 2.

45:48 - 46:05 Read in full sermon

The point: Consciously, personally endorse God's promises by faith and prayer, 'cashing them in' at the bank of heaven.

Martin quotes Charles Spurgeon's concept of God's promises as a 'checkbook' that believers can 'sign by faith' and 'present at the great bank of grace' to receive spiritual enrichment.

Promises of God, dear people, ought to allure and encourage us to avail ourselves of the privilege of prayer, and those very promises ought to shape and to mold the prayers that we bring unto God. Charles Spurgeon, among his many, many written works, has a choice little book that has helped thousands over the years called Faith's Checkbook. And it's a book of promises, and he calls it Faith's Checkbook because this was Spurgeon's thinking about the promises of God. I quote, and I quote him from another place, The sacred promises, though in themselves most sure and precious, are of no avail for...

47:04 - 48:28 Read in full sermon

The point: Consciously, personally endorse God's promises by faith and prayer, 'cashing them in' at the bank of heaven.

This anecdote describes someone found dead in squalor with uncashed checks and bonds, illustrating the tragedy of believers living spiritually impoverished lives despite having access to God's rich promises.

someone three doors down in an apartment complex was dead for a week or two and the police and the proper authorities have come and forcefully entered and there they have found someone who died in filth and squalor and poverty only to discover when they began to dispose of the goods that they had dozens of uncashed checks, bonds, were in poverty in the midst of wealth. But you see the wealth that was potentially the for one reason or another they never endorsed those various media by which all that they could have needed would have been brought into their hands put upon their backs put in thei...

52:39 - 54:00 Read in full sermon