1984 Biblical Priorities for the New Year

Introduction: The Significance of New Year's Day for Reflection

0:05 This sermon was preached on Sunday morning, January 1st, 1984, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey.

0:17 Now let us once again seek the face of God in prayer, asking the Lord's special blessing upon his own word, particularly the word of exhortation that will come to us this morning. Let us pray. Amen.

1:09 In a giddy disregard of these great realities, we thank you for these occasions when we are forced by the very external circumstances of pulling down one calendar and putting up a new one, bringing ourselves to change the date on our checkbooks. In all of these ways, we thank you that you have forced upon us the reminder of the brevity of life. Amen. Amen.

1:40 Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

1:40 We pray that the Holy Spirit this morning will take this context in which all of us is found and make it his peculiar classroom to underscore precious lessons from your holy word. O God, so come to us that many of us will mark this day not merely as the first day of a new calendar year, but as a day when significant dealings with you were experienced in our own hearts. Hear our prayer. Hear our cry, and meet us as together we cry for your blessing upon the ministry of your word.

2:19 Amen. I am reasonably sure that there is not a man or woman or a child within the sound of my voice who understands my words, who is not very much aware that today marks the first day of the year 1984.

2:46 Now, in many ways, it is one of my own. Children was commenting, what's the big deal? In a sense, New Year's Day is like any other day. It is comprised of 24 hours of a day and a night.

3:04 Each one of those hours comprised of 60 minutes. Each one of the minutes comprised of 60 seconds. It's a day in which we must breathe if we are to live, in which we attend to the basic necessities of life, and in many ways, it's true that it's no different from any other day. It's just one among the 365 days that comprise an ordinary year.

3:31 However, New Year's Day is not like every other day, particularly in this one respect. It forces upon all of us who are conscious of the day that time is relentless, in its forward advance. New Year's Day underscores the fact that the gearbox of time has no neutral and no reverse. And of all the things that modern technology has been able to produce, even helping us to send men to the moon and send them orbiting about our earth and accomplishing all kinds of marvelous things, all of the king's horses and all of the king's men, all of the most sophisticated computers combined, cannot produce a gearbox for time that will make it go into neutral or reverse.

4:36 Time moves inevitably forward and only forward.

4:44 Because of this fact, the beginning of a new year provides a very natural occasion for the beginning of a new year. To stop, to evaluate, and to ask ourselves, where are we in this inevitable advance of time? The threshold of a new year provides a most natural and even, we might say, God-given opportunity for the kind of reflection that is not so natural and is difficult at any time of the year. And in keeping with this concern, what I wish to do this morning is to bring to you as a congregation a pure word of exhortation.

Sermon's Purpose: Exhortation Rooted in Assumed Doctrine

5:28 That is, there will be very little teaching this morning. We generally seek to establish in this pulpit a reflection of the biblical perspective that what we are to be is rooted in what we are. What God calls us to do is based upon what God declares He has done. The indicative is the foundation of the imperative.

5:56 What God tells us becomes the basis of what He demands of us. But I'm assuming in this exhortation this morning, the whole spiritual and theological and biblical climate that forms the very nuts and bolts, the meat and taters of this ministry, the absolute authority of Scripture, the existence of the one true and living God, in three persons, the great reality of man being a distinctive creature made in the image of God, fallen in Adam, God's great concern to redeem a multitude out of every kindred, tribe, and tongue and nation, the great realities of the incarnation, the perfect life of the Lord Jesus, His substitutionary death, His literal resurrection, His ascension to the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and the awesome, awesome realities of His second coming of heaven and hell, all of those great commodities that form the very warp and woof of historic biblical Christianity, I'm assuming all of those realities. It is not my purpose to expound and to teach facets of any one of them. Rather, I am concerned that assuming those realities, I might bring to bear upon your consciences this morning a word of exhortation,

7:24 that is, a word to incite you to action, a word to give consolation and direction to your lives. And the first word of exhortation is addressed to the people of God exclusively. And this word of exhortation has three strands, one of them rather lengthy and two little itty-bitty ones. And so we'll take the bulk of our time with the first one.

Exhortation 1: Renewed Commitment to Fundamental Biblical Priorities

7:51 And my exhortation to you as the people of God is, first of all, that you resolve to enter this new year with a renewed commitment to fundamental biblical priorities. That you resolve on the threshold of this new year to enter this year with renewed commitment to fundamental biblical priorities. Now, you have heard it said that the Christian life is won or lost in the trenches of the basics.

8:34 It's in the trench warfare of the basic things that you and I will win or lose in the battle that is the Christian life. And among the basics, nothing is more basic than your priorities. Now, your priorities are not the basic things. Your priorities are the things to which you give primary or prior attention.

9:01 They are the things which cause your greatest concern, the things concerning which your mind is most occupied with serious concern. In a very real sense, you know what your life is? It is a commentary and an exposition of your priorities.

9:27 If someone were to have access to all of the details of your life, from your thoughts to your planning to the actual way you spend your time, the way you relate to people, your life, in a very real sense, is nothing more or less than an extended commentary on your priorities,

9:51 on the things that you really believe matter, the things that you really believe count. And what I am saying this morning to you as God's people is that there is no better time to resolve, to commit yourself afresh to fundamental biblical priorities than standing as we do on the threshold of a new year. Now let me break this down into the four basic categories in which all of us live. And it's in these categories that we, as God's people, need to stop, reflect, examine, and come to renewed commitment with respect to biblical priorities as they touch these various categories in which we live. Category number one is the priorities of your personal life. The priorities of your personal life. And there are many texts, both in the Old and the New Testament, that we might, call epitomizing priority texts.

Category 1: Priorities of Your Personal Life

11:02 That is they state in a very pointed, succinct way what the priorities of a godly man or woman are touching his or her personal life. For example, Proverbs 4.23, guard your heart above all that you guard, for out of it are the issues of life. Now, inevitably, one of the things that we need to do is, in order to do that, we need to do something about it.

11:29 And one of the priorities every one of us has is the preservation of our lives. That's why when we've stepped off the curb, when we shouldn't and we see a car coming, we instinctively step back. We place high priority upon the preservation of our lives. That's why no matter how busy we've been, no matter how pressured we've been, we have found time to eat enough to sustain ourselves.

11:54 And some of you, alas, have found too much time to do far more than sustain yourself, as your last step on the scales revealed. And 1983 found you accumulating more of you. You're bringing more of you into 1984. It's a year older, but it's a few pounds more of you.

12:13 Well, you see, in a very real sense, the priorities of our personal life are all bound up in such a text as Proverbs 4.23. Above all the things that you guard, above all the things that create in you a sense of concern to preserve and conserve. Above all things that you guard, guard your heart.

12:36 Or we can take some of those New Testament priority texts. Matthew 6.33. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.

12:50 Or 2 Corinthians 5.9, where Paul says, Wherefore we are ambitious, we make it our ambition to be well. Pleasing unto Him. Or Philippians 1.21, For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Or Philippians 3.14, This one thing I do, forgetting the things that are behind, I press toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Now, if we reduce all of those to their common denominator, surely we'll come up with something like this, that the number one, one priority in our personal lives should be nothing less than singleness of devotion to Christ and the pursuit of a life of holiness.

13:42 Singleness of devotion to Christ. For to me to live is Christ and the pursuit of a life of holiness. Guarding our hearts above all that we guard. Seeking first the kingdom of God, seeking to lay hold of that for which Christ has laid hold of us.

14:09 Now, if this priority is real, if this is regulative, then it will be reflected in what we do with the time allotted to each day. Whether we go on rationalizing that we're too busy for personal devotions, we're too busy for secret prayer, our lives are too complicated, for self-examination. Our lives are too pressured for honest self-reflection. My friend, naming the name of Christ, that kind of talk will not hold water in the presence of God.

14:46 God has set the priorities of your personal life. And whatever the details of that life may be, whatever the legitimate demands upon your time may be, you can never say, I'm too busy and too pressured in the will of God to do the will of God.

15:07 And the will of God is revealed in His precepts. Seek first the kingdom. Men ought always to pray and not to faint. Be ye holy, for I am holy.

15:19 These are the priorities imposed upon us by God. And if we have allowed the manifold and complex events and responsibilities of the past year to erode our hearts, our commitment to that priority, then surely, what more kind providence than to have New Year's Day fall on the Lord's Day when you have opportunity in the afternoon hours to sit down in the presence of God and ask yourself, O God, search me and try me and know my heart. O God, is my number one personal priority to have singleness of devotion to Christ? Yes.

16:04 And is it to pursue a life of holiness at any cost? I call upon you as God's people to resolve to enter the new year with a renewed commitment to this fundamental biblical priority of your personal life. But then there's a second category. And it is the category that pertains to the priorities of your domestic life.

Category 2: Priorities of Your Domestic Life

16:32 Now, whatever your domestic situation, may be, some of you married, some of you single, some of you widowed, some of you living with your parents, some of you living alone. Each of us has a domestic sphere. And the Word of God addresses itself specifically to those domestic relationships. There are many passages addressed specifically to husbands, to wives, to fathers, implicitly to mothers.

17:03 Some passages directed specifically to mothers. To children, to widows, to single people. Those passages you ought to be very familiar with. Ephesians 5, 1 Peter 3, Titus 2, 1 Corinthians chapter 7.

17:18 Are you familiar with them? Are they the kinds of passages to which you turn again and again and again? Well, what better time than on the threshold of a new year to commit yourself afresh to the priorities of your particular life? Your individual, domestic responsibilities and sphere of activity.

17:43 It will not do to have vague and nebulous hopes that somehow or other you will just become the father you ought to be. You'll just somehow or other become the husband you ought to be. It doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way.

18:01 The Word of God gives explicit direction. And Psalm 1 describes the blessed man as the one who meditates in the law of God day and night. The blessed person is the one who brings his mind and spirit to the touchstone of Scripture and again and again is crying out with the psalmist, Oh, that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes. No man loves his wife as Christ loves the church because he's read the passage through in a period of engagement and occasionally reads it through two or three times in a 25-minute, I hear, marriage.

18:39 The man who reads it weakly falls far short of that high and lofty standard. But he who is committed to this priority is far more likely to approximate that love of Christ to his church than the one who just rocks along doing what comes naturally in his role as a husband. And so my exhortation to you is on the threshold of this new year, renew your commitment to the distinctive priorities of your domestic situation. Go to the Word of God, the portions of that Word, and if you're not sure where they are, come to your elders and say, Well, I want to prioritize my domestic life and experience. What passages speak more specifically to me? And we'll gladly point them out. I don't have time even to read them this morning.

Category 3: Priorities of Your Church Life

19:33 Only to point you in the direction of a few of the chapters. But I call, It's all upon you, dear child of God, to come to that place of renewed commitment to those priorities. Then the third category of priorities is this, the priorities of your church life. I'm speaking to you who are the people of God, and in particular, those of you bound together in the fellowship of this assembly.

20:01 In Ephesians chapter 4, particularly verses 11 to 16, make it abundantly clear that the matter of your life and the maturation of all the individuals takes place in the context of vital and intimate interaction with the entire body. The Word of God does not recognize the maturation of the individual believer in isolation.

20:29 Now, there are certain circumstances in which God providentially isolates one of His children, and in His grace, He brings them to grace, to great maturity in Christ, in spite of their being cut off from vital interaction with God's people. But that's not the norm. The norm is clearly set forth in Ephesians chapter 4 that we come to individual maturation in living relationship with the other members of the body. Notice the language of verse 16, from whom all the body, fitly framed and knit together through the body, through that which every joint supplies according to the working in due measure of each several parts makes the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love. So you have this individualism, but you also have this very evident sense of the organic unity of the people of God. And what better time, dear fellow believers, and in particular, and in particular, and in particular, fellow members of Trinity, what better time to renew your commitment to the biblical priorities in relationship to your church life than here at the beginning of this new year. I'm speaking specifically of the priority

21:56 of faithful attendance at the stated meetings. Simple. Elementary. But the Word of God says in Hebrews 10, forsake not the assembling of yourselves together as the customary custom of some is.

22:13 Already in the flush of the apostolic preaching of the gospel, there were some who were beginning to treat lightly the gathering together of God's people. Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together. The basic pattern of that assembling is beautifully described in Acts 2.42 that these all continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching, in fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers.

22:45 There you have at least in seminal form an outline of a full spectrum of a healthy church. It continues steadfastly in apostolic teaching. It continues steadfastly in shared life, fellowship, in the periodic remembrance of the Lord at His table, and in seasons of corporate concentrated worship, in prayer and intercession. May I remind you that no one forced you to become a member of Trinity Church.

23:19 You voluntarily identified yourself with this people. And when you did, you said in the presence of your elders in an interview that you were committed before God to make a matter of conscience about being present at the stated meetings of the church. Now I ask you, is your conscience sensitive? Is it sensitive to that covenantal commitment?

23:46 When you are absent from any service, are you conscious that that's an abnormality? Or have you allowed a providential abnormality that occurred in March to become an accepted standard of normalcy by November?

24:04 Maybe there was a stretch in your work responsibilities when it was utterly impossible for you to be present Wednesday nights. And you got out of the habit of being here, and though the pressure at work has lessened, you feel comfortable sitting home with your feet kicked up on Wednesday. You're no longer here at prayer meeting. What right do you have to go back on your commitments to God and to his people?

24:29 I ask you to answer in the theater of your own conscience, not in the presence of an elder, but in the presence of Almighty God. Could you go to God in the next 30 seconds and justify before God your breach of covenant? I just leave the question. What better time to reflect upon such questions than here on the threshold of a new year with respect to this whole matter of committing yourself afresh to fundamental biblical priorities, not only in your personal life, not only in your domestic life, but in your church life, and fundamental to all else, is the priority of faithful attendance at the stated meetings. But then there is the priority of honest efforts to be truly involved biblically with your brothers and sisters. And here some of the clear directions of the word of God have been brought before you again and again. Exhort one another day by day.

25:37 Hebrews 3.13 Again, Galatians 6.1 Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ 6.4 I'm sorry, 6.1 is we're to seek to restore one who's overtaken in a fault. James 5 and verse 16. Confess your sins one to another and pray one for another. Philippians chapter 2 in honor, preferring one another.

26:03 Ephesians chapter 4 in verse 32 being kind, tenderhearted, forgiving one another. These directives, dear people of God, they're not there as some lofty ideal to be admired, as some standard occasionally to be consulted. They are to constitute the priorities of our real life with these real redeemed but imperfectly sanctified sinners in this real church called Trinity Baptist Church.

26:35 And what better time, dear fellow Christians, to renew your commitment to those priorities. I am going to get close enough to my brothers and sisters that they will feel free to share their burdens. I'm going to get close enough that my shoulder's available.

26:54 None of us can afford the luxury of keeping at the kind of distance that is non-vulnerable.

27:04 You know what I mean by that? You're vulnerable when you get close to your brethren and to your sisters. They're going to see things in you that they didn't see at a distance.

27:16 You're going to see things in them that you didn't see at a distance. But we're called upon to bear one another's burdens, to forgive, to forbear. And all of that assumes that we're getting closer enough in our real interaction with one another that we need to bear with one another's weaknesses. How can we exercise the love that covers a multitude of faults if we live at such a distance from one another that we don't ever see each other's faults?

27:48 You don't see most of each other's faults when you're all dressed up and spiffy and sweet and smiling and howdy-doody and all the rest on a Sunday morning in a casual acquaintance. It's when you're sitting at the table, when you're in each other's homes, when you're engaged in more intimate, multi-leveled interaction and conversation, then your difference is of opinion on how to keep Christmas surface.

28:15 And then you're tempted to try to prove your way is right and his way is wrong. And then the word of God says to his own master, a servant stands or falls. Who are you to judge your brother? Ah, now you're learning what it is to exercise the grace of accepting your brother in matters of indifference.

28:32 See what I'm talking about? It's all only when our lives begin to mesh in this biblical way that so many of these graces are drawn forth and it's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing to see the people of God dwelling together in unity. It's not a beautiful or amazing thing to see them dwelling in unity if they're all dwelling in an insulated little box.

29:00 That's not an amazing thing. But when they dwell together, when they dwell together, when there's enough togetherness for the real remaining sin to surface, and yet in spite of that they're dwelling together in unity, people stand back and say, this is an amazing thing. What is it? What's the glue that holds those people together?

29:24 And they're forced to acknowledge that it's something more. Something more than the world knows anything about. It's God's grace working in us. These very graces of forgiveness and forbearance and long-suffering, a commitment to love one another enough to rebuke each other's sins.

29:43 For open rebuke is better than secret love, faithful of the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. What a wonderful and opportune time to commit ourselves afresh to the priority of our church life. I'm going to be present when the body gathers. It is utterly unthinkable that when my body gathers, I'm going to be present when my body goes to the table this afternoon that my foot should be in the bedroom.

30:11 When this body goes to the table, the whole organism goes. That's the imagery. When the body gathers, all the members should be present.

Category 4: Priorities of Your Contact with the World

30:23 And as the body interacts with itself, these graces are wonderfully manifested as God pours out His Spirit upon us. But then there are the priorities of your contact with the world. That's the fourth category of your own personal priorities, biblical priorities, the priorities connected with your interaction with the world. And what do we need on the threshold of this new year?

30:55 We need a renewed commitment to the biblical priorities with respect to our contact with the world. We need a renewed determination on the one hand not to be like it, not to love it, and on the other hand to be light and salt and to bear witness to it. Romans 12, 2, be not conformed to this world. Be not conformed to this present world system.

31:23 And as we had occasion in a family powwow this past week to underscore afresh, the devil who is in charge of this world system, the system of men and things that are under his power, it knows it knows no neutrality with respect to you as God's people. It's not as though the world says leave me alone and I'll leave you alone. The devil is committed to using the world system to cripple and hinder the testimony of the people of God. Your adversary, the devil, is aggressive.

31:59 He goes about as a roaring lion. He's not a sleeping lion who will only bother you if you go over and kick him. He's alive, weak, aggressive lion. And he works through this world system seeking to impose upon the Christian patterns of worldliness.

32:19 And I'm not talking necessarily about worldliness in terms of the gross external forms of it, though surely I'm not excluding that. But worldliness in terms of a perspective that is more concerned with the temporal than the eternal, the external, more than the internal. The things that touch upon my reputation more than the things that touch upon the reputation of Christ and His people. We need on the threshold of this new year to have a renewed determination that we will not be like the world.

32:55 That we will not love the world. 1 John 2, 15 and 16 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. That's a command from God. But rather, a renewed determination to be light and salt to this world.

33:10 Matthew 5, you are the light of the world. To live blamelessly before it. Philippians 2, 14 and 15. That you may be blameless and harmless sons of God without rebuke, shining as lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.

33:29 And then determined by life and where God gives us opportunity by lip to bear witness to this world. Ye shall receive power, the Holy Spirit coming upon you. You shall be witnesses, unto me. Now, dear people, there's been nothing profound in what I've said, but surely you would not debate with me that these are the fundamental biblical priorities that ought to regulate the way you order your life.

33:56 Would any here debate that these are the fundamental biblical priorities? Well, what do we need? We don't need some new light, some new wrinkle, some new exotic priority. What we need is God's people is a salt, solemn engagement of our hearts that these priorities will regulate the way we spend our lives if God gives us the privilege of living out 1984.

34:24 That biblical priorities will be reflected in our personal lives, in our domestic lives, in our church life, and in our relationship to the world.

The Deathbed Test: A Call to Conscience

34:38 As I wrestled with how to bring this home with some degree of clout to our hearts, I felt perhaps the best way was to ask you to try to do a little work with your imagination this morning. Imagine that God in his providence has let you live out your allotted time, whether it's going to be 20 years, 30, 40, 50, 70, 80, 90, whatever it is, and God has given to you the wonderful luxury of coming to what you know is your deathbed with your full consciousness. You've not become senile, you've not been out of touch with reality because of the deterioration of your natural powers or because of the necessary alleviation of intense pain through drugs. You have that unspeakable privilege that not many have, but assume you all have it this morning, of having all of your mental faculties still relatively sound and alert, and yet you know you're on your deathbed. There are those beautiful descriptions in the Old Testament where old Jacob is on his deathbed. He says he gathered up the skirts of his garment and he died.

35:49 Gathered all his people around him and died. Well, imagine you're in such a place and God has revealed to you that you've got four hours before you're going to die and that he wants you to reflect for one hour on what your life has been in terms of your own personal priorities.

36:09 Then he's going to give you an hour in which you can gather all of your relatives around you who were part of your domestic sphere and to look at them and to look upon them and reflect upon how you related to them throughout your life. Then he gives you the opportunity to have your bed placed down right in the middle of the family of God that you've been a part of, to look into the faces of God's people, and to have brought before you the pictures of those who've gone on before to whom you previously were related in living bonds of fellowship. Then he gave you an hour to have your neighbors and work associates all gather around you, those who were your contacts with the world. Now, my question is this.

36:50 If God were to bring you to that deathbed tomorrow,

36:56 how would your conscience be?

37:01 If for one hour, God said, I want you in the loneliness of your deathbed to reflect upon your own personal priorities over your lifespan since you named my name,

37:13 would you have a comfortable conscience?

37:17 Not a conscience that wouldn't need the blood of Christ. Godly, saintly old bishop usher died with this prayer on his lips. God, be merciful to me, a sinner. And the most holy man or woman who ever lived will die with that prayer upon his lips and in his heart.

37:34 But could you look back over whatever time God has given and say, O God, in spite of all my sins, in spite of my many digressions, in spite of my periods of dryness and dullness, O God, you know that the pattern of my personal life was one of pursuing singleness of devotion to your Son and a life of universal holiness at any cost. Would you have the comfort of a conscience that in the presence of God would tell you that?

38:17 That's a pretty searching question, isn't it?

38:20 Well, my friend, don't ever expect you'll have the comfort of that on a deathbed if that's not the way you're living now. Because you will be on your deathbed on your deathbed. That's what you are becoming right now. Right now!

38:35 You're storing up comfort or you're storing up torment for your conscience on your deathbed in terms of the priorities which regulate your life here and now. You see, people may mock someone who is determined to have single-hearted devotion to Christ. People may mock the person who is so persnickety and so fastidious about every detail of his life who is troubled in his conscience when he speaks a word that only misses a hair's breadth. Truth!

39:13 They may mock him. They may feel irritated. But oh, how they'll envy his deathbed!

39:20 How they'll envy his deathbed when he can say, O Lord, thou knowest that with all my heart I sought to love your Son with single-hearted devotion and to be like him at any cost.

39:37 How would it be if you gathered your family around you, fully conscious that you had never met the full standard that God has set for husband, for wife, for widow, for single person, whatever the domestic sphere may be? Could you nonetheless for one hour reflect upon the patterns of your life domestically and say, O God, knowing that my best deeds need to be washed in the blood of Christ and fall short of the absolute standard of your perfection, this much I know, Lord, that with all of my heart I can say with David, I will walk within my house with a perfect heart. O Lord, I have sought to live as a man of God, as a woman of God, before my husband, before my wife, before my friends, before mom, before dad, before any with whom I was identified in domestic sphere. Lord, I sought to take the priorities of your word to heart. I sought to take I made time for family worship. I made time for not letting the sun go down on my wrath.

40:44 I made time to communicate with my wife, with my children, with my husband. I made time for the priorities of your word.

40:57 Could you come to your deathbed with some measure of peace and joy? Not that you had earned heaven. I'm not talking now about the grounds of our hope that will be accepted. That's Christ and Christ alone.

41:12 Christ plus nothing.

41:16 But I'm talking about the patterns of life that will bring you to a deathbed anticipating going to heaven with joy or going to heaven with many regrets.

41:31 Then bring near God's people.

41:35 Will your conscience give you some measure of rest that in spite of all the failures you really did seek to get close enough to your brothers and sisters to be vulnerable to them and they to you? I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about you. You really sought to bear their burdens.

41:53 You sought to be faithful in reproving and rebuking where necessary. You really sought to live together as one body forbearing, forgiving as God for Christ's sake forgave. But would you be embarrassed that there are those concerning whom you'd allowed a spirit of alienation to develop? A spirit of suspicion?

42:15 Of irritation? Of rejection? A spirit of indifference? A spirit of calloused hard-hearted unwillingness to put your hand on the shoulder when you saw them turning aside?

42:27 Would your conscience give you any peace if that deathbed were tomorrow? My friends, expect nothing more on your deathbed than what you're accumulating right now. Right now. And then the same holds true with regard to your relationship to the world.

Exhortation 2: No Unresolved Controversy with God or Man

42:49 Dear people of God, I plead with you. I entreat you. I exhort you. And only God, the Holy Ghost, can make it effectual to any spiritual action.

42:58 But I plead and I exhort, I entreat, resolve to enter this new year with renewed commitment to Biblical priorities, personal life, domestic life, church life, and in relationship to the world. That's my major word of exhortation. Now I said I had two little short ones to you God's people. The first of the short ones is this.

43:25 Resolve to enter the new year with no unresolved controversy with God or man. Resolve to enter the new year with no unresolved controversy with God or man. The worst companions with which to enter the new year are a smarting guilty conscience, a grieved Holy Spirit, and a clogged way of access to the throne of grace. The worst companions with which to enter the new year are a guilty conscience, a grieved spirit, and a clogged way of access to the throne of grace.

44:08 Now many of us are aware that 1984 is going to be the year of the Olympics. And we'll be hearing and seeing a lot about the Olympics. Now imagine the Olympics are in progress. And the time has come for the finals in the 100 meter dash.

44:29 That's the thing that starts and it's over in less than 10 seconds or 11 seconds. Now what would you think if you saw the cameras zoom in to the starting line and they come down to the final and there may be six men getting into the starting blocks. And you know how they shake their legs out to loosen up their muscles when they get into the starting blocks and you saw something funny around his ankles. And the camera zoomed in even further and when it did you saw that strapped around both his ankles were lead weights.

45:11 He had 10 pounds of lead weights strapped around his right ankle and 10 pounds strapped around his left ankle. And he gets into the starting blocks. And you say but he's crazy. I mean he's never going to put a hand on his shoulder.

45:29 He's got a microphone. They're going to interview this character. And they say sir do you know that you've got lead weights on your ankles? You say sure enough.

45:40 I'm very much aware of it. Well what in the world are you doing with 20 extra pounds strapped on your legs? You don't have a chance. He said oh yeah no problem whatsoever.

45:53 Wait a minute man you're in world class of winning that race with the lead weights. What would you call the man if he disregarded all of the pleadings, all of the entreaties and left his lead weights on? You'd say he was what? A few bricks less than a full load?

46:14 You'd say the guy's crazy. Can't do it. Well you see the point don't you? The Bible likens the Christian life to running a race.

46:25 And you know what it says? Every what? Weight. Every weight.

46:31 And the sin which doth so easily beset us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us looking off unto Jesus. You see we cannot run that race if we have the impediment of the heavy weight of a guilty conscience. And I think one of the greatest tragedies is for a believer to pillow his head any night with sin and confess that the blood of Jesus is available to cleanse. With unresolved controversies with his brethren many times with a husband or wife or son or daughter or mom or dad I can think of nothing that is probably closer to the agony of hell than a household where there is bitterness and unresolved tension between the members of that household. To me that must be hell. And yet alas in pastoral dealings I become aware of the fact that there are husbands and wives and parents and children who go weeks and months of unresolved controversies with each other which are ultimately controversies with God. Dear child of God you will not make progress in the Christian life.

47:52 You could be subjected to the preaching of the Apostle Paul on the first Lord's day the Apostle Peter back from the dead on the third and Spurgeon on the fourth and you would still make no progress. What is the point of controversy with God? Now get honest. Come on now get all the smoke away and get honest with God and with yourself.

48:18 What is the point of controversy? Is it the use of your television? As you look back do you have to say I have made so little progress because I simply spent too much money

49:00 on the television and I have no choice but get out of it and I have to saying, I wonder if the pastor is going to touch me. Yes, I am. I'm touching the issue. I'm touching the issue.

49:24 Your lack of discipline in eating and your inordinate weight gain that is a disgrace to God and an abuse of His temple.

49:35 The excessive imbibing of food, drink of any kind. Let all things be done in moderation. Self-control is the fruit of the Spirit. And where there is no self-control in eating and drinking, the Spirit is grieved.

49:53 He is quenched. He is restrained.

49:59 You cannot make progress in the Christian life. What is the issue? I've only touched on a few. Shooting, as it were, my arrows at a random.

50:08 May God make them find their mark and may He shoot a hundred others that I would never mention. But whatever they may be, child of God, resolve. I will be 84 with a bloody conscience. What I will do is enter 84 with a conscience cleansed in the blood of Christ.

50:29 I will enter 1984 with no conscious controversy to God or to my fellow man.

50:38 Such a person has enough trouble running.

50:41 But without that, the Word of God is clear. He that covers his sin shall not prosper. And you can have a thousand people send you cards, have a prosperous new year. You can have a million Christians pray that you will be a Christian.

50:57 That you'll have a prosperous new year. But mark it, he that covers his sin shall not prosper. And all the good wishes of all the good men won't make you prosper. You've got to deal with your sin.

51:14 God resists the pride. Are you too proud to sit down with your wife and say, Honey, I have not loved you as Christ loved the church. Are you too proud to sit down with your children and say, Look, I've been a poor, poor testimony. I've been irritable.

51:31 I've been short-tempered. I've been insensitive. Oh, my precious children, will you forgive me? You're too proud?

51:41 Then God has set Himself to resist you.

51:47 God's against you and says no progress before your children is necessary before the people of God.

52:08 Negate what God has said.

52:12 Resist the pride. I preach this as one who has his wife and his three children sitting under the sound of my voice. And I trust they would have the moral fortitude if I were preaching something other than what I've practiced. They would stand here and publicly rebuke me.

52:40 I'm not talking about some ethereal standard.

52:47 Oh, dear child of God, I plead with you. Resolve to enter the new year with no unresolved controversy with God or man. What's the area of controversy? The minute any difficulty comes into your life, what's the first thing you think about?

53:06 Uh-oh, is God whopping me for that? Is God chastising me for that thing? Then deal with that thing. Deal with it.

53:14 Not tomorrow, not the next day, but today.

Exhortation 3: Renewed Submission to and Trust in God

53:19 And my final brief word to you, the people of God, is this. Resolve. Resolve to enter the new year with renewed submission to and trust in the living God. Resolve to enter the new year with renewed submission to and trust in the living God.

53:41 Men speculate, men predict what they think the new year will hold, but there's only one thing certain. This new year will hold whatever a sovereign God determines it should hold. In the little world of your life, in the larger world of your family, in the larger world of your community, our nation in the world, Psalm 115.3, our God is in the heavens.

54:03 He has done whatsoever He pleased. And He'll do whatever He pleases in 1984. So what does this say to you and to me? It means that on the threshold of all the unknowns that I am resolved, I am resolved to submit to this gracious living God.

54:23 That's why James 4.14 and following is such an appropriate New Year's passage. Go to you that say, we're going to do this and we're going to do, we're going to do that. Whereas he says, you know not what shall be on the morrow.

54:36 What you ought to say is, if the Lord will. In other words, we should live with that disposition of joyful submission to the sovereign will of God. And what better time than on the threshold of a new year to say, oh God, I'm determined to live in the posture that says, whatever the will of your providence brings to pass, it is, it is your will. And by your grace with Job, I shall say, the Lord gives, the Lord takes.

55:09 Blessed be the name of the Lord. That's the will of his providence. The will of his precepts is to regulate our walk. The will of his providence actually regulates and disposes all the events of our lives.

55:24 And God calls us to submission. But then it's a call on the threshold of a new year to renewed trust, to trust in this living God. There's that beautiful text, and I can't quote it from memory, so I've got to turn to it. In Psalm 112 and verse 7, speaking of the righteous man, what a beautiful description of a righteous man on the threshold of a new year.

55:49 Psalm 112 and verse 7,

55:53 He shall not be afraid of evil tidings. His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord. He shall not be afraid of evil tidings, whatever they are. Why?

56:05 He has a heart that is fixed. Fixed in what? Fixed in the immovable rock of the changelessness, the faithfulness, the sovereignty of Almighty God. And so on the threshold of the new year, we need to resolve that we shall, by the grace of God, come to a new level of unquestioning trust that whate'er our God ordains is right, holy, His will abides.

A Word to the Unconverted: Flee God's Wrath

56:35 Then I close my exhortation by one brief word to the people who are not converted.

56:42 What is my word to you on the threshold of a new year? My word to you is this, resolve to enter the new year no longer a stranger to grace and to God. Resolve to enter the new year no longer a stranger to grace and to God. My unconverted friend, your condition is both frightening and yet wonderfully hopeful.

57:10 You say, frightening and yet hopeful? Yes, it's frightening. Your condition is frightening because you've come through a year in which though the wrath of God abides upon you, it has not fallen down upon your head. John 3.36 He that believes not the wrath of God abides upon him. And your condition is frightening. You come out of 83 into 84 but the canopy is still the same. The wrath of God abides upon you.

57:43 It's upon you. And every day as it unfolds, God's wrath is there. It's there. Each day, each moment, each week, each month, the wrath of God abides, abides, abides, out of 83 into 84.

57:59 The wrath of God abides. My unconverted friend, your condition is frightening. But your condition, your condition is so hopeful. Why?

58:09 God has sustained your life, sustained your sanity. He set before you an open Bible, a living Savior, concerned servants of Christ who plead with you in the language of 2 Corinthians 6. Today is the day of salvation. Today, if you hear His voice, harden not your heart.

58:31 You see, your condition is frightening, but it's hopeful. You're still alive. You still have your sanity. You're still within the sound of the Gospel.

58:40 You're still within the sight of an open Bible. You're in the company of those who even as I preach are praying, O Lord, may that word find its mark. What better, what better climate in which to get right with God. My unconverted friend, determine that you will not any longer abide under God's wrath, but come out from under the canopy of His wrath.

59:07 Into the wonderful resting place of His love in Christ. My plea for many of you, precious children, young people, adults, is to face on the one hand how frightening is your condition, but how hopeful it is if God had determined to give you up to wrath. He could have cut you off long ago, but He still invites you graciously and authoritatively in the Gospel to come, to forsake yourself, to flee to Christ, and find rest in Him. Let us pray.

Closing Prayer

59:52 O our Father, we are sobered this morning as we reflect upon the fact that time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all of its sons away, and that if you delay the coming of your dear Son, within a hundred years all of us will have passed off the sea, and the only remembrance of us will be the gravestone that marks the resting place of our remains. O Lord, we are sobered by this reality, and how we pray that your Holy Spirit will take the occasion of this New Year's Day to bring us all to renewed commitment to our biblical priorities, wash us from all of the sins of the past, cleanse us and help us, O Lord, by your grace, that we shall be a more holy people than we've ever been before, that we shall be more determined to live by the norms of Scripture at any cost. And then, Lord, have mercy, we pray, upon those who sit under the canopy of your wrath. While the door of mercy is open, the way of deliverance stands before them. O may they flee to Christ, and find refuge in Him.

61:19 Seal your word to our hearts, and make this to be a significant day by your grace in each one of our lives. We ask these mercies in Jesus' name. Amen.