Revealed Will for Christian Servants #5

The point: Render obedience to superiors not only to the reasonable and good, but also to the perverse, unless they command open disobedience to God's law.

Martin uses the analogy of working with a new recipe that yields more than expected to explain why he had too much material for the morning sermon and is continuing it in the evening.

Amen. Now I'm quite sure that many of you women and perhaps even a few of you men and perhaps a few more of you young ladies have had the experience of working from a new recipe for the first time. And you looked over the recipe and you saw the various ingredients and you made sure you had them on hand. And then you saw that it said, It serves four to six.

3:40 - 4:12 Read in full sermon

The point: Render obedience to superiors not only to the reasonable and good, but also to the perverse, unless they command open disobedience to God's law.

He defines 'incentive' using the example of a father promising an ice cream sundae for cutting the lawn, illustrating how Peter provides incentives for obedience.

Well, no such thing is in the mind of the Spirit of God communicating the will of Christ through the apostle Peter. But knowing this would be difficult. Peter is led by the Spirit to help the people of God with a number of incentives. And I'm embarrassed that I didn't define the word incentive for some of you children. An incentive is something that stimulates to action. If your dad says, get the lawn cut by four o'clock and I'll take you down to Friendly's for an ice cream sundae, the promise of a sundae at Friendly's is to be an incentive to get out there and cut the lawn. Peter is giving in...

8:44 - 9:46 Read in full sermon

The point: Follow Christ's example by being sinless in deeds and without deceit in speech.

The word 'guile' is explained by its original use in describing baiting a hook to deliberately deceive a fish, illustrating the nature of intentional deception.

sinless in deeds, but he was without deceit in speech. Now the word, no guile, we don't use the term guile too frequently. It just means without deliberate deception. As we saw when we sought to open up chapter 2 and verse 1, putting away therefore all wickedness and all guile, that word was originally used to describe what you did when you baited a hook.

18:43 - 19:08 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The sermon moves to Christ's response to specific undeserved suffering, highlighting two negatives: 'when he was reviled, reviled not again' and 'when he suffered, threatened…

Reviling is described using metaphors of words as a club to beat, a sword to pierce, arrows to wound, or a swarm of bees to sting, emphasizing the destructive nature of abusive speech.

First of all who being continually reviled reviled not again. What does it mean to revile someone? Well it means to heap upon them vile and abusive speech. You revile someone when you take your words and use them as the club by which you seek to beat the spirit of another person.

25:55 - 26:20 Read in full sermon

The point: Parents who smack their children on the mouth should repent before God and their child.

Martin uses the example of a parent smacking a child on the mouth to illustrate the demeaning nature of Paul being struck, and to condemn such parental behavior.

Perhaps some of you, and I'm sorry you carry the wound, maybe you had a father or a mother that would in the impulse of anger and irritation and frustration smack you on the mouth. I trust there's none of you. I trust there's none of you. I trust there's none of you.

34:33 - 34:46 Read in full sermon

The point: Prove yourselves to be Christ-free men and women by rising above the litigious climate and not threatening to sue upon your rights.

He quotes an epitaph from a slave's tombstone, 'He practiced the virtues without which kings are but slaves,' to highlight the true freedom and nobility found in Christ-like virtues, even in bondage.

And over the grave of a certain very noble slave who had died as a slave, never became a free man, the epitaph on his tombstone said this, he practiced the virtues without which kings are but slaves. And you know that thing has fastened itself upon my mind and my soul. He practiced the virtues without which kings are but slaves. That should be written at least as a subscript over the grave of every true Christian.

51:10 - 51:54 Read in full sermon