New Year's Promise

The point: Plead the New Year's Prayer and the New Year's Promise as ballast for facing the uncertainties, unpredictables, and demands of 1983.

The Word of God, specifically Romans 8:32, is compared to ballast in the hull of a ship, providing stability as believers navigate the uncharted and potentially stormy seas of the new year.

namely Romans 8 and verse 32, and we shall examine it under the general title of a New Year's Promise. So by the end of the day, I trust to have put in your hands a prayer peculiarly appropriate for us as the people of God, and even for you who are not the Lord's people as we stand on the threshold of this new year, and then to encourage you to plead that prayer, to put in your hands a promise from the living God by which you may plead the fulfillment of those prayers in the coming days. As we face all of the uncertainties, all of the unpredictables, all of the unknowns, of 1983, is there a Wo...

4:30 - 5:57 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin explains the logical conclusion: 'how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?' He uses an analogy of children asking parents for shoelaces to illustrate…

Children asking parents for shoelaces, knowing their parents provide greater needs like food and shelter, illustrates the logical principle of arguing from the greater to the lesser, which Paul uses in Romans 8:32.

Now you kids do this all the time. It doesn't bother you to go and ask Mommy and Daddy to get you some shoelaces when they break and your shoes are flopping off your feet. You're not reluctant to ask Mommy and Daddy for some new shoelaces. Why?

29:08 - 29:21 Read in full sermon

Driving home: He must give up his well beloved to be treated not just like an ordinary criminal but like an outcast to be spat upon, to hang naked, to be jeered and mocked. Death at the hands of cruel people and then to pour upon him …

The example of children not asking for an expensive playhouse illustrates that they understand the limits of their parents' resources, contrasting with the limitless resources of God.

Now you don't walk up to Mommy and Daddy any day of the week and say, hey Mom, hey Dad, you know, I think I'd like a playhouse out in the back that's about the size of our living room. No. And I'd like to have it made with beautiful oak wood and carpeted floors. You don't go asking for things like that.

29:46 - 30:03 Read in full sermon