Biblical Resolutions For a New Year

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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Well, brothers and sisters, we are going to do something a bit different today, and that is that this afternoon as we're approaching the beginning of a new year,

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I want to come to you with a different kind of message, a bit different than what we are used to.

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You see, I don't usually make a big deal of New Year. If you're like me, you and I both, we readily acknowledge that in many ways,

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January 1st or December 31st for that matter are just arbitrary dates on the calendar.

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But leading up to today, in fact, over the last number of months, I've been strongly inclined to use this time and to use this sermon on the eve of a new year as an opportunity to call you, to call each one of us, men and women in Christ, brothers and sisters, to lives of greater faithfulness to God.

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And to do that this afternoon, I'm going to structure things a bit differently. I was saying to our brother

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Sam that as I was preparing for this sermon, things got away from me a little bit.

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And so what we're going to do today is somewhat unusual.

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And that is that I want to start our time today with a bit of an extended biographical sketch from church history.

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Now, what place does this have in the sermon? For those men that are in our institute, they know that there is a genre of sermon that we would classify this as.

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Stephen Lawson would call it a biographical exposition. But I want to spend for the first 20 minutes or so of our time,

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I want us to examine the life and the example of one of the prominent men of church history.

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And then, once we're done that biographical sketch for about the first half of our time, with that sketch still fresh in our minds,

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I want us, with our Bibles open before us, to briefly look at, to consider, a series of what

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I'm calling biblical resolutions. Biblical resolutions for a new year, certainly, but biblical resolutions for a lifetime.

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And so with that in mind, I want us to get into our time machines. I'm going to take us back a few hundred years to frame our time together with this biographical exposition.

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And for the sake of some mystery, I'm not going to let you in exactly on who

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I'm speaking about until about partway through, and so you can hear the story and maybe guess for yourselves who it is that I'm referencing.

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But on the 5th of October in the year 1703, in a small town, in this small town of Windsor, Connecticut, East Windsor, Connecticut, a little boy was born who would one day become one of the most important Christian theologians that the world has ever seen.

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He was raised by his father Timothy, who was a pastor in East Windsor, and his mother Esther.

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And this little boy grew up, and young men, I want you to hear this, this little boy grew up as one boy in the midst of ten sisters.

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Now, for those in this room who are sisters, forgive me for a moment, but this was, imagine what that would be like as a little boy, a middle child, the 5th child, in the midst of 11 siblings, ten of which are girls.

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Now, for this young boy, it was no doubt a hardship at times, but in this environment that was steeped in Puritan piety, in vigorous learning, this young man thrived.

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In fact, he and his sisters were before even their teen years, educated.

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And again, our Institute men would appreciate this. Educated before in their teens in Greek, and then in Hebrew, and then in Latin, and then in arithmetic, and grammar, and logic, and in rhetoric.

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And this young man, at the ripe old age of 13, left his family home.

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He moved to the coast, to New Haven, Connecticut, and began his studies at Yale College.

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And as a teenager, this young man became fascinated with the life of the mind and human intellect.

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He had an undeniable gift. And he began to accumulate notebooks.

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Maybe some of you like to collect notebooks with the intention of starting a journal or something like that.

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And so you buy a notebook, and then you write in it a few words, and then you give up on that one, and then you buy a new notebook, and then begin writing in that one.

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This young man accumulated notebooks, but not empty notebooks, but full notebooks. Ones that on the front were labeled the natural sciences, the scriptures, the mind, and the miscellaneous, as he called it.

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And before he reached the age of 20 years, he graduated from Yale with a Master's of Arts, and then set off on a course of formal theological studies.

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Now, I'm not sure if you've guessed it yet. Maybe the word miscellaneous gave it away. But this young man was none other than Jonathan Edwards.

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Jonathan Edwards was one of the last of the American Puritans, one of the biggest and brightest minds that America has ever produced, and one of the most outstanding theologians that the church has known, one of at least, since the

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Apostle Paul. And in the years that follow, I think some of us know some of the details of this young man's life.

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At the age of 23, he was ordained as a minister in Northampton, Massachusetts. He served as the associate pastor to his grandfather,

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Solomon Stoddard. It was here that he began his labors as a pastor -scholar par excellence, a scholar of the highest order.

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For kids who think that going to school for 6 or 7 hours a day is difficult, maybe you struggle with some of this.

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This young man of 23, at that stage, began to devote 13 hours a day to his studies.

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At his desk, by candlelight at times, with an open Bible and an open book, studying

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God's Word. And there, for 23 remarkable years in Northampton, Jonathan Edwards labored amongst the congregation there.

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And I say that those 23 years were remarkable, because during that time, Edwards was used of God in a number of revivals.

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First in 1734, when he was just 31 years old,

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Sam's age. Edwards preached a sermon on justification by faith alone, that brought about a local revival that spread throughout the entire

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Connecticut River Valley. I could only dream to preach one sermon as important as that one.

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And with that one sermon, the revival endured for nearly 2 years, with almost 300 people converted.

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And then again in 1740, the first great awakening swept through the

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American colonies. George Whitefield, you might recall, came to the United States and preached in the open air to tens of thousands of people.

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Kids, you might remember me telling a story of him preaching outside the coal mines, and the tears of the men creating skin -colored gutters in their cheeks.

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And then in 1741, in the midst of that great awakening, Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon,

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Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. And somewhere between 20 ,000 and 50 ,000 people entered into membership in New England churches.

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And these conversions were not a flash -in -the -pan kind of variety, but they were not the sort that were shallow and short -lived, not the seeds sown into shallow soil.

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But one historian notes that, like a sudden bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky, there came a great awakening that was marked by spiritual concern, spiritual hunger.

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It was said that in Boston, someone could leave bars of gold on the streets, and people would walk by and not touch them.

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They were so conscientious, so heavenly -minded. And it was around this time that Jonathan Edwards began to house a young man named

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David Brainerd. Again, another phenomenal individual from church history. An extraordinary young man who was a missionary to the

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American Indians. And at the age of 29, he found himself dying of tuberculosis.

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This was before there was any treatment, any cure for tuberculosis. And Jonathan Edwards and his family, at great risk to themselves, took

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David Brainerd into their home and cared for him until he died. And it was said that Jonathan Edwards would often hear the cries of David Brainerd's prayers through the wall and got a sense of his piety.

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And moved so much by this young man's life, he took all of his diaries and his memoirs and compiled them together and wrote what is now known as The Life and Diary of David Brainerd.

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He was the editor of those diary entries, those journal entries, and then a biographical sketch of his life.

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And God used then even that writing to bring about what became the modern missionary movement.

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It was William Carey who picked up The Life and Diary of David Brainerd, edited by Jonathan Edwards. And after reading it, was so struck in his soul that he packed his bags and moved to India.

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Adoniram Judson followed, and countless other men. They wrote, sorry, they read entries in his journal like this from David Brainerd where he said,

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In the evening I was grieved that I had done so little for God. Oh, that I could be a flame of fire in the service of my

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God. And so these men, moved by this book, took that gospel as a flame of fire in the hand of God to the ends of the world.

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And it was, in many ways, an electric time in the early years of Jonathan Edwards' ministry.

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But if you were under the impression that all was remarkably well during those 23 years, if all things were smooth sailing during those 23 years, you'd be sadly mistaken.

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For one, Jonathan Edwards was, in his own constitution, a painfully introverted man.

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One person said of him that he was not the kind of person that was easy to know. Even Edwards recognized this weakness in himself.

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He said to one of his friends, he said, I'm really good for nothing except for study.

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And if that weren't enough, the church in Northampton refused to adequately provide for the material needs of their pastor.

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As a result, Jonathan Edwards and his family were often impoverished. He was increasingly resented by the members of his church because he was frequently asking for raises.

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But after all, he had a meager salary and his wife and 11 children to provide for.

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And so this alone would have been enough to drive an ordinary man to the brink of despair. But even in the midst of that,

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Edwards labored on. But perhaps most stunningly, when Edwards was 46 years old, at the end of that 23 -year tenure of service, the congregation held a vote and put him out of the church, a church that he had faithfully shepherded for over two decades.

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When the votes were counted, think of it this way, in this congregational church, when the votes were counted, 223 members voted to put him out and only 23 members voted to keep him as the pastor.

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After pouring his heart and soul into this congregation for 23 years, 13 hours a day, 5, 6 days a week, he was put out of the church without hesitation.

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And for this reason, because he insisted that the ordinance of the Lord's Supper was to be reserved alone for believers in Jesus Christ and not just the morally reformed unbelievers who would visit the church.

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And so after the church cast its vote, Edwards wrote to a friend and said, I am now, as it were, thrown upon the whole wide ocean of the world and know not what will become of me and my family.

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Edwards' soul was gripped with sorrow. But more than that, he was afflicted with anxiety at the welfare of his dear wife and his 11 children.

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But on his final day, as Edwards was to be ruthlessly kicked out of the church, he took his

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Bible into the pulpit, he laid it open, and he preached the word of God faithfully to those people.

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As he looked into their eyes, one of the onlookers later noted, and it was documented, that as he preached, there was not even so much as a hint of bitterness in his heart, in his voice, in his mannerisms, in his gestures toward the people.

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And this is evidenced by the fact that when he was finally put out of the church, after having preached that last sermon, it isn't the case that this so often happens, the church put him out and then realized, we have no one to preach next week.

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And so what did they do? But they hired Jonathan Edwards to fill the pulpit until they found an interim pastor.

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And there he came, every week, with the Bible open, and preached the word of God faithfully to these people.

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And after this whole ordeal, once Edwards was released from the church in Northampton, it took him about another year, a full year in fact, to find another suitable church.

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And maybe this will encourage you. But this time it was not a church of 500 people, but it was a church that consisted of just 12 families.

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Went back and did the math. Smaller than our church, for certain. And for the next seven years, this great theologian,

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Jonathan Edwards, preached. He used his colossal intellect to minister to this minuscule, uneducated, unsophisticated congregation.

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One of his contemporaries marveled at how diligently Jonathan Edwards would labor so that he would study the text, he would understand it in his mind, in his vocabulary, and then he would bring it down to their level, to a place that they could understand, the farmer and the

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American Indians that he ministered to there. And so on this frontier of the new world, as he ministered to the

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Indian people, as they called them, and the dear saints of this tiny church, he proclaimed the glories of Jesus Christ.

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It was a smaller church. It was a more modest vocabulary, but it was a savior who was as big as ever.

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And after seven years in that church, Edwards was eventually called to serve as the president of Princeton University.

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But before he could be there for even more than two or three months, he died on March 22nd, 1758, from a botched smallpox inoculation.

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Now, to this day, many of you, when I mention that name, Jonathan Edwards, I see you,

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I've piqued your interest, because you know the name. To this day, Jonathan Edwards remains one of the most profoundly impactful theologians that has ever lived.

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Some 200 years after Edwards' death, the doctor, Martin Lloyd -Jones, he declared that no man is more relevant to the present condition of Christianity than Jonathan Edwards, and one of the most enduring aspects of his legacy.

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You can go through and read all his thousand -plus recorded sermons.

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You can go to the library, go to the bookstore, and purchase numerous of his books. The multi -volumes of his miscellanies.

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But one of his most enduring works, one of his most oft -referenced works, it's not his books, it's not his sermons, but it is his resolutions.

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The resolutions of Jonathan Edwards. You see, when

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Jonathan Edwards was just 19 years old, we go back in the timeline of his life, we find him either just in Yale College or just post -graduation.

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That time in life when you are ripe for transition. You're planning what your life is to become.

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And around this time, he wrote down 70 resolutions that he intended to use as guideposts to follow all the days of his life.

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And these resolutions, outside of Scripture, became some of the most important guiding principles of his earthly existence.

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In fact, written at the top of his 70 resolutions is actually, you could say, a 71st resolution, which was that he resolved to review these resolutions every week of his life.

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And what God did was he used these resolutions as an extra -biblical means to promote the faithfulness and the fruitfulness that we find in this remarkable life of Jonathan Edwards.

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So, that is my biographical sketch. Exactly 20 minutes. Look at that. Now, why do

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I share this account of this life of Jonathan Edwards? It is because today

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I would like to exhort you, like Jonathan Edwards, in imitation of Jonathan Edwards, as he imitates

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Christ, to make biblical resolutions not only for 2024, but for the remainder of your life.

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This week I was texting, text messaging with our brother, Mac Tomlinson, and he sent me a quote that was just on time.

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It's like we planned it. It was a quote from Vance Havner that says, so while the world drinks and parties into the new year, you know what's going to happen.

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The buses are running for free tonight. While the world drinks and parties into the new year, only to spend the next day hungover, exhausted, and dissatisfied.

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Let the Christian meet the new year on his knees with a hallelujah, with praise offered up to God.

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You see, at the end of the year, I think it's all of us, a universal experience.

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It is natural for one to take stock of their life, to consider the year that has passed, to give consideration to the year ahead, and in a world where even unbelievers make resolutions, how much more should

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Christians resolve to live more faithfully and to live more fully for the glory of God?

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After all, resolutions are biblical, and I'm not just picking this out of the hat.

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In Romans chapter 15 and verse 20, the apostle Paul, he wrote, and thus

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I make it my ambition. He had resolved. I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named.

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Now if you're allergic to the word resolution, or maybe more allergic to it closer to January 1st, then call it a holy ambition.

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Call them holy ambitions. But brothers, sisters, I stand before you with a biblical cloud, and an extra biblical cloud of witnesses who have been helped by this practice of making biblical resolutions.

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And so for the remainder of our time, about another 25 minutes, I aim to stay on top of that.

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I say 25 minutes very carefully because I want to briefly leave you with eight resolutions for the new year.

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About two minutes each I've given myself time for. Eight biblical maxims that you can resolutely adopt to serve

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God more fully and to serve him more faithfully in this year and in the remaining years that God gives you.

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Wouldn't it be astounding if the Lord should will, my brothers and sisters, to give us another year and that in the last service of 2024, we can look back at this service and say by God's grace,

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I have made progress in all of these areas. By grace, I can see an increase in my life.

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By grace, I can see a flourishing that is today that wasn't then. And so I want to give you these eight resolutions.

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Some of them a little bit longer, some of them a little bit shorter, but all of them brief. And so number one, resolution number one.

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Resolve to live for eternity. Oh, resolve to live for eternity in a world that is obsessed with the presence, in a culture that is preoccupied with the latest breaking news and the newest viral

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TikTok and the state of the art. Brothers and sisters, resolve to be a man or a woman who is consumed with your eternity with God.

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Consumed, perseverating on the eternal, the heavenly. The apostle

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Paul wrote to the church in Colossae in Colossians chapter three and verse one.

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He said, if then, and these are powerful words, I love Colossians three.

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If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

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Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

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For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

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There is no such thing as being too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good.

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But there is such a thing as being so earthly minded that you are of no heavenly good.

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And increasingly, in our modern Western Christian culture, this

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Christian culture, this Christianity, this churchianity in the world around us is becoming so earthbound that I fear that she is almost altogether useless.

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And I would spare you from a life of uselessness. And there is a way to inoculate yourself against this scourge in the visible church.

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And the remedy is this. Oh, set your sights on heaven, on the heaven of God and on the

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God of heaven, and do not look to the right, and do not look to the left. And you will be more useful to God and to your fellow man when all of your hopes and all of your dreams and all of your ambitions and all of your treasures are bound up in heaven and the

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God of that heaven. Jonathan Edwards, in his own resolutions, in Resolution 22, said this,

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Resolved. All of them start with that word, resolved. I resolve to endeavor to obtain for myself as much happiness in the other world as I possibly can with all the power, might, vigor, and vehemence, yea, violence,

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I am capable of or can bring myself to exert in any way that can be thought of.

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Amen to that, brothers and sisters. Strive with vigor. Strive with vehemence.

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This is the only time you'll ever hear me call you to violence. Strive, yea, with violence to be a man or a woman who lives on this earth as it were between two worlds with one foot in eternity with God and with one foot on the earth here.

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Years after Edwards made that resolution, he prayed another prayer. He said, Lord, stamp eternity on my eyeballs that in everything he would see the world through the lens of eternity.

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Oh, that this would be our prayer too. Wouldn't it be amazing? Picture this with me for a moment.

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What it would be like if we found each other each week, not anxiously dwelling on things below, not captivated by the deceitful and fleeting pleasures of sin, but that we would find one another as it were coming down from our seat in the heavenly places where we have been hidden with Christ in God.

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That we would come as one pastor said he did living in the presence of God all the days of the week and then

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Sunday coming down with the treasures that he had gathered from the week before. Oh, that the

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Lord would make us heavenly minded. Resolution number two. Resolve to fear and to love

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God more. To love and to fear God better.

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Dear friends, I am concerned even when I look at my own soul and I think you can relate to me at my own propensity to drift away from God both in my love for him and in my fear of him.

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Just recently I found myself reading Isaiah chapter 17 in verse 10.

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And in that passage it says for you have forgotten the God of your salvation and have not remembered the rock of your refuge.

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There might have been a time when I was a new believer when I would look at that and in judgment upon the nation of Israel say how in the world could you have forgotten your

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God? How in the world could you have not remembered the rock of your refuge? But then as I grow as a

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Christian as I see more and more years between now and the time of my conversion

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I have discovered many of you have too I'm sure that it is altogether possible to keep your chin up to persist in serving to grow in your understanding of doctrine and at the same time grow indifferent in your love for God.

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Christ warned the church in Ephesus in Revelation chapter 2 and I know you know this warning well when he said

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I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake and you have not grown weary but I have this against you that you have abandoned the love you had at first.

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Remember therefore from where you have fallen repent and do the works you did at first if not

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I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

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Let me ask you if you take just a moment now for sober self -examination is your heart increasingly enlarged in your love for God?

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Do you love him more today than you did yesterday? And will you love him more tomorrow than you did today?

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Or are you going through the motions? Going through the motions while your love grows cool while it grows old and stale?

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When you think about your Christian life and you reflect on your early years as a Christian do you think well the best days of my love for God are behind me now?

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If so if that is your perspective if you see that your love is not what it once was that you have in the words of Christ abandoned the love that you had at first it didn't just drift away it was abandoned

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I join with Christ as he says to you repent oh to repent it is a grievous evil when we let our love for temporal things for the trivial things of this world supplant our love for God repent and turn from this godless drift lest he remove your lampstand also and in the words of Christ return to the things you did at first what was it like when you were a new believer and you would open the

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Bible and it was as if the Lord was was speaking audibly to you through the pages of scripture when you walked with your

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God when it didn't take any work at all to meditate on the loveliness of God to consider all of his attributes even if then you barely knew what the word attribute meant to consider who it was that God is let me tell you say no to more things so that you can say yes to dwelling richly on the gospel so that you can be a student of God that you might be a lover of God Jonathan Edwards had a profound effect on Robert Murray McShane you heard me reference him last week he seemed to be on a roll here but Robert Murray McShane wrote a hymn in 1837 that I think spells out how it is that we increase our love for God I think it's very unfair for a preacher to stand behind a pulpit and to say love

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God and then not tell you how to do it but Robert Murray McShane in his hymn

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How Much I Owe he said when I stand before the throne dressed in beauty not my own when

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I see thee as thou art love thee with unsinning heart then Lord shall

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I fully know not till then how much I owe chosen not for good in me wakened up from wrath to flee hidden in the

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Savior's side by the Spirit sanctified teach me

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Lord on earth to show by my love how much I owe if you find yourself low on love appreciate for a moment how much you owe to the living

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God for his goodness and kindness and grace to you in Jesus to be a student of God as I said that you might be a lover of God and let us love our

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God supremely and as we love him supremely let us learn also to fear him supremely these two things kept in perfect balance the love of God and the fear of God and we have loved we have lost all sense of the fear of God we no longer live with a sense of omniscient holiness or a sense of our imminent accountability to him but how much how different would our lives be if we were to join

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Edwards in his seventh resolution remember this came from a 19 year old not a 10 ,000 year old a 19 year old he said resolved never to do anything which

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I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life were

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I to stand before the living God and give an account to him would that we would fear

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God like that resolution number three resolve to aggressively kill sin in an earlier iteration of this point it was resolve to kill sin no resolve aggressively to kill sin in 1

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Peter 2 in verse 11 the apostle writes this he says beloved

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I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul now may this be the year may this be the day that you realize that sin is not your friend but it is the cruelest of foes it is your enemy and it should be treated as such oh that God would grant us to see how odious our sin actually is it is spit directed at the holy face of God it is insidious and deadly poison that is sweet on the lips and then bitter in the stomach and then destructive to the soul

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Edwards resolved he said whenever I do any conspicuous evil action

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I resolve to trace it back till I come to the original cause to grab the vine and to pull it all the way to the root and then to carefully endeavor he says to do so no more and to fight and to pray with all my might against the origin of it brothers and sisters resolve not in the friendly

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I'm going to live out what John Owen said be killing sin or it will be killing you it's in vogue

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I'm going to put it on a Christian t -shirt I'm going to sell it on a reformed Christian website be resolved today and this year to find your sin out and to go nuclear a true and faithful Christian Jonathan Edwards says does not make holy living an accidental thing it is his great concern as the business of the soldier is to fight so the business of the

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Christian is to be like Christ resolution number four remember this is not even this is just over 10 % of all of Edwards resolutions so we're barely scratching the surface but resolve to live a quietly faithful life there is a passage in Proverbs 20 verse 6 maybe you'll turn there with me a sentence in Proverbs 20 and verse 6 that when you read it it should either bring you tremendous encouragement or it should sting like salt in a wound

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Proverbs 20 and verse 6 many a man proclaims his own steadfast love but a faithful man who can find when the prophet

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Ezekiel spoke for God of the impending judgment against Israel and he was looking as it were for a man like Moses who would stand in the gap he said to the nation to their shame he said

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I sought for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land that I should not destroy it who did he find

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Ezekiel 22 and verse 30 but I found none oh how many there are who make a great showing of their supposed faithfulness but when you get down to the nitty gritty details of their lives it is all smoke and mirrors and no substance yet while a faithful a steadfast a resolute man or woman is rarer than silver it is rarer than gold they are rarer than the most precious of gemstones but brethren resolve this please resolve this with me and let us hold up each others arms together in a world where faithlessness excuse me faithfulness where faithfulness is at a premium be that man or be that woman of God in whom true faithfulness can be found this is a summons not to flashiness but to fidelity fidelity it is a call the call that we see in 1st

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Timothy 2 -2 a call to prayer the kind of lifestyle where Paul says we ought to pray for kings and all who are in high positions why that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life godly and dignified in every way one of Edwards resolutions was that if there ever was one individual in the world he says at any one time who was properly a complete

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Christian he said resolve to act just as I would do if I strove with all of my might to be that one who should live in my time brothers and sisters in this year ahead if there is going to be only one truly faithful Christian in the world resolve that that would be you quiet peaceful faithful resolution number 5 redeem the time this 52nd resolution of Edwards reads as true today as at any other time in human history he said

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I frequently hear persons in old age say how they would live if they were to live their lives over again resolved that I will live just as so I can think

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I shall wish I had supposing I live to old age translated into modern

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English I will live as I wish I had when

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I come to die he said I resolve never to lose one moment one moment of time but improve it in the most profitable way

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I possibly can our brother Sam read from Psalm 90 in verse 10 those words teach us to number our days excuse me this is verse 12 teach us to number our days that we might get a heart of wisdom we need dear brothers and sisters that heart of wisdom when

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I see the way the world spends its time and we are not immune from the influences of that world it betrays not a heart of wisdom but a heart of folly

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James the brother of our lord in James chapter 4 and verse 14 he asked the question what is your life for you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes and yet the way people spend their time today they treat their life as if it were a rock and not a mist and it is a travesty that we spend that so many spend this mist on the most trivial of activities

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I have a smart phone somewhere here I went and did some research one 2023 study found that the average person spends 6 hours and 37 minutes on their smart phone not every week because many of you have a smart phone too not every week but every day and if that trend continues as it has year over year that number will increase in 2024

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I do not expect that that number is remarkably different from when compared to professing evangelical

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Christians at 6 hours and 37 minutes a person is not merely a poor steward of their time that person is zombified brothers and sisters

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I might say as a synonym to this resolve to redeem the time resolve to lock this away or a

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TV or a computer or whatever it is that you have and ask the

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Lord teach me to number my days that I may gain a heart of wisdom imagine for a moment what it could be like what could be done if that 6 hours and 37 minutes times however many were to be redeemed and spent on encouraging a brother or sister in Christ calling a senior visiting them in the hospital praying for a brother or a sister in need, praying for the nations going across the street with a gospel tract and putting it in your neighbors mailbox brethren resolve that you will live as you wish you had when you come to die and don't start that tomorrow start it today and perhaps start it with your phone resolution number 6 resolve again this iteration number 2 it was resolve to read the whole

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Bible that's not what this point is is it resolve to devour the whole

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Bible blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers but his delight is in the law of the

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Lord and on it he meditates day and night how does it go and he shall be like a tree planted by streams of water bearing its fruit in season and out of season resolved to study the scriptures so steadily constantly and frequently as that I may find and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same notice he didn't say resolve to read the

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Bible period even at 19 he was wiser than that but to read to study it steadily constantly frequently and not just so he can say that he did it but so that he might grow in the knowledge of the same would that next year you could look back and say

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I know God better and I know God's word better I've memorized I've written the word of God on my heart that I might not sin against him when

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I hear Bible publishers you see it at the bookstores boasting that the Bible is the best selling book of all time

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I confess that as I read that I bite my tongue a little bit because I know that there's another half to that equation that it is the best selling book of all time and the least read of all the best selling books resolve that that would not be the case this year by we have on the back table a series a variety of printed

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Bible reading plans make a plan this year to go and not only read the

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Bible but devour it get a pocket Bible put it in your pocket not on your phone but a pocket

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Bible and take it out and read it instead of flipping through your phone write a verse on a memory card on an index card a recipe card and put it in your pocket and when you go to reach for your phone stop yourself reach in the other pocket grab that verse and memorize it for the day devour

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God's word resolution number 7 resolve to improve your communion with God Jeremiah 9 in verse 23 and 24 we read thus says the

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Lord let not the wise man boast in his wisdom let not the mighty man boast in his might let not the rich man boast in his riches but let the one who boasts boast in this that he understands and knows me that I am the

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Lord who practices steadfast love justice and righteousness in the earth one of Edwards resolutions was this he said resolved with much to exercise myself all my life long with the greatest openness

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I am capable of to declare my ways to God and lay open my soul to Him all my sins temptations difficulties sorrows fears hopes desires and everything in every circumstance let this be the year that when you look back a year from now and you look back 10 years from now and by God's grace 20 30 40 50 years from now you can say there are many things that are important to me but none are so none are as important as my walk with God that I have walked with God that I have communed with God this is a call to something far more than improve your prayer life it is this commune with your

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God because Jesus Christ died that you might commune with Him Edwards said oh the closest walk with God is the sweetest heaven that can be enjoyed on earth and then lastly number 8 resolve to cast yourself more fully on Jesus Christ resolve to live with greater assurance of your standing before God through a fulsome and hearty trust in Jesus Christ Hebrews 10 and verse 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience in our bodies washed with pure water let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful how many

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Christians how many of you go about your day most days plagued with little or no assurance of your salvation you pray like it you read like it you live like it you parent like it you work like it like God is displeased with you how many of us go about our days with bad consciences visiting doubting castle subjecting ourselves to the giant despair but let me exhort you in this last point it could be all works if I just preach resolution 1 through 7 resolve to take hold of Jesus Christ as your savior as your only savior like Israel in the wilderness take hold of Jesus Christ and say

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I will not let you go until you bless me put all your eggs in his basket look to him trust in him with all of your sins take them to his atoning work do not rest so long as you do not have assurance be a student of the gospel always so that at any moment of the day any day of the week any hour of any day every minute of every hour you might be able to say before God it is well with my soul do you realize that that 7 billion people more probably have no idea how it might be well with their souls and yet you hear it every single week you read it

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I hope every single day brothers and sisters take that gospel and deliver it to your own soul that you might say in all sincerity that when that trump resounds and that Lord shall descend even so it is well with my soul preach the gospel to yourself preach the holiness of God preach the odiousness of sin preach the glories of Jesus Christ and then cast yourself upon him this year so that again in a years time you can look back and say

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I didn't have assurance then but by God's grace through Jesus Christ through my hope in his gospel

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I have assurance now and when I die I will go to be with him when

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Edwards was preaching to those 12 families church that was probably about this size today one of the things that he would go on to say is this he who has

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Christ has all he needs and needs no more so brethren if you resolve one thing this year resolve to go to Christ your needs will be no more let us pray thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church if you would like to keep up with us you can find us at facebook at grace fellowship church or our instagram at grace church y e g all one word finally you can visit us at our website graceedmonton .ca