Sumbission: Potentially Saving Impact

The point: If any of you found my previous words demeaning and unnecessarily hurtful, I do sincerely ask your forgiveness.

Martin recounts how he mistakenly referred to blank pages in a book as having small print, illustrating his own fallibility and the congregation's good-natured correction.

Now, before we turn to the Word of God, to read a portion of it, to pray, and then to seek to open up that portion, I have two things that are a kind of appendix to the ministry this morning. First of all, a number of you were very quick to tell me that when I opened up the book this morning, and to tell you that the print went out to the margins, it was small print. I turned to the only place in all 560 pages where there are two blank pages, and you were kind enough, I don't know how one of you resisted the temptation, at least one of you, to raise a hand and say, Pastor, there's nothing but ...

0:04 - 1:05 Read in full sermon

The point: If any of you found my previous words demeaning and unnecessarily hurtful, I do sincerely ask your forgiveness.

Martin shares how reading 1 Corinthians 13 and a sister's comment convicted him of using 'unnecessarily harsh and inflammatory' language in a previous sermon, leading to his public apology.

Now, the second matter is more serious. In my own devotions this morning, one of the portions that I read in seeking to prepare my heart to preach was 1 Corinthians 13. It says, if I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not love, I am a clanging gong or brass, a tinkling clanging cymbal, etc. And one of the sisters mentioned to me as she went out this morning that in my earnestness in seeking to press home that when we're grappling with what the passage says, we ought not to be trying to find loopholes and exceptions, and I think I used language something akin to such and such a q...

1:06 - 1:57 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin details the specific grievous situation Peter envisions: a Christian wife married to a husband who 'obeys not the word,' describing how such a division might arise and…

Martin describes a common scenario where a pagan couple marries, and then the wife is converted through the gospel, while the husband remains in determined unbelief, creating a 'grievous situation.'

And so he writes, saying, this directive obtains and is applicable to all of you wives, now notice the language, that even if, assuming that such a situation would not be the norm but the exception, that even if, he didn't say because since, most do not obey but even if any obey not the word. So the grievous situation envisioned by Peter would be in these instances most likely one that came to pass after this pattern. Here are a man or here is a man and a woman who have contracted a marriage in their state of pagan indifference to God and to His truth, to His law. Perhaps they've never heard t...

11:17 - 12:21 Read in full sermon

Driving home: if by so doing she not only pleases God, but can be the instrument of his being rescued from eternal damnation, he knows he's got a very powerful hook in the heart of these Christian wives.

Martin uses Paul's example in 1 Corinthians 9, where Paul becomes 'all things to all men' to 'gain' or 'save' some, to define 'gained' in 1 Peter 3 as spiritual conversion.

What a Christian does with things that are not strictly forbidden by God's law. And he says as a gospel preacher, I'm willing to forego lawful liberties that I might be more effective as a winner of souls. And now we pick up the reading in verse 19 of 1 Corinthians 9. For though I was free from all men, I brought myself under bondage to all that I might, here's our verb, gain the more.

20:39 - 21:06 Read in full sermon

Driving home: That husband must see that at the root of a true Christian is a commitment to do the will of God no matter what it costs.

Martin describes the vulnerability of a Christian wife with a pagan husband, who observes the godly behavior of other Christian men and may feel she is 'missing' something, potentially leading to emotional adultery if not guarded.

I don't believe so. But it certainly would include, her sexual purity. You see, Peter was a married man and a realist. Now think of these wives.

33:02 - 33:13 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The first major lesson is that one's duties in relationships are not conditioned by the spiritual state or conduct of the other party, drawing an analogy from Peter's interaction…

Martin recounts Jesus' interaction with Peter in John 21, where Peter asks about John's future, and Jesus responds, 'What is that to you? Follow me,' illustrating that one's duty is not conditioned by another's path.

Well, the first thing we've learned and I want to underscore it again, I touched on it briefly this morning, is that the duties of husbands and wives in the marital relationship are not conditioned by the spiritual state of the other party. We need to get hold of that until it becomes a deeply rooted conviction within our souls. If we turn, as we find in John chapter 21, the Lord makes this will known to Peter. He says, if you're going to follow me, eventually, it's going to lead to martyrdom.

42:11 - 42:54 Read in full sermon

The point: Cultivate gratitude to God that you are in a divided household (converted wife, unconverted husband), recognizing it is grace that has made it so and saved you from eternal damnation.

Martin shares about neighbors with seemingly happy marriages who have no felt need for grace, highlighting the danger of worldly contentment masking spiritual blindness, contrasting it with the 'divided household' of a converted wife and unconverted husband.

On the broad road that leads to destruction, blind to the glories of God in the face of Christ, unprepared to die, ready to drop into hell, whatever heartache and hardship and pain and discomfort comes because the sword of division has entered your marriage, my dear Christian wife and sister, rejoice that God has not left you in your sin. You might be the happiest couple in the world giggling your way into outer darkness. We have neighbors for whom we continually pray. They seem to have such good marriages that one of my deepest griefs is that they have no felt need. Now, I'm glad that in comm...

46:57 - 48:03 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not be discouraged from ongoing verbal witness, passing out tracts, or distributing Gospel literature.

Martin shares a testimony of a man converted after hearing his son pray for his salvation, illustrating how a wife's godly actions (praying with her child) can be a 'silent preaching' that God uses to pierce an unconverted husband's heart.

This man said, Well, one of the major things, not the only thing, but one of the major things that brought him out of his life of total indifference to the Word. His wife had been converted for several years. He was utterly indifferent to the Gospel. But he said the thing that God used in a peculiar way was walking by the bedroom of one of his children one evening and hearing his own son with his wife in there with him praying for his salvation.

54:15 - 54:47 Read in full sermon