Anatomy of a Man of God: His Heart

The point: Keep a biblical standard before the minds of the men in the academy, constantly etching the vision of their ultimate purpose.

Martin references a powerful sermon by 'brother Martinez' from the previous hour, urging listeners to get the tape, to illustrate the impact of God speaking through His word and the difficulty of transitioning emotionally after such an experience.

This sermon was preached on Sunday evening, September 25th, 1988, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Those of you who were with us in the previous hour, unless you sat in the auditorium of phase one, in a state in which you are grievously quenching the Holy Spirit in your own life, could not help but be conscious that God was speaking to us, that God was underscoring afresh the great and awesome privilege that is ours to be surrounded with gospel light and a plenitude of Christ's gifts to his church. And I frankly find it very difficult after a season such as that season w...

0:00 - 1:21 Read in full sermon

The point: Constantly look upon your heart as a garden that needs careful guarding and weeding out of pride, secret sin, lust, envy, covetousness, bitterness, unforgiveness, and resentment.

The heart is compared to a garden that, without constant, careful guarding and weeding, will become choked with weeds of pride, secret sin, lust, envy, covetousness, bitterness, and unforgiveness, illustrating the continuous effort required to maintain spiritual purity.

The man of God must constantly look upon his heart as a garden that like the garden in his backyard will of itself without any effort on his part become nothing but a weed bed unless it is constantly carefully guarded, pulling out the fraytions of the weeds of pride, the weeds of secret sin and carpition, secret lust and envy and covetousness, bitterness and unforgiveness and resentment and a host of other sins to which he is not only subject as an imperfectly sanctified saint, but to which he is positioned. Mission in the work of the ministry makes him more evil, for he pours out the good of ...

20:56 - 22:23 Read in full sermon

The point: Never forget that the greatest struggles in ministry will be those against sin in your heart, which can impede access to God's throne.

Martin recounts preaching on Proverbs 4:23 as a 21-year-old Bible college senior, illustrating his long-standing conviction about the importance of a guarded heart and how his ministry experience confirmed this truth.

pursue sins of baron in your most blessed season will be the struggles qualify christian ministry reflecting upon this text in proverbs 4 23 and looking back of ministry my mind went back to the spring of 1956 when a 21 year old senior at a bible college in the southern part of our country had to preach his senior chapel sermon one of the requirements of the bible college that i attended and from which i graduated was that every senior student somewhere in the course of his last year would preach

24:46 - 26:04 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin presents the story of King David, first showing his tender heart in 1 Samuel 24, then contrasting it with his hardened heart in 2 Samuel 11 during the Bathsheba incident…

The biblical account of David cutting off a piece of Saul's robe in the cave (1 Samuel 24) is used as a vivid example of a tender heart, as David's heart immediately smote him for this seemingly minor act against God's anointed.

But Saul in his envy and jealousy is chasing around the wilderness of Judea like he were some kind of an outlaw or some kind of an insurgent, the head of some kind of guerrilla force. And in the midst of that horrible envy and jealous passion driving him to chase David, we have an incident recorded in chapter 24 of 1 Samuel that shows the state of David's heart at this time in his life. It came to pass when Saul was returned from following the Philistines that it was told him saying, Behold, David is in the wilderness of En Gedi. Then Saul took 3,000 chosen men out of all Israel and went to se...

42:53 - 43:56 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin presents the story of King David, first showing his tender heart in 1 Samuel 24, then contrasting it with his hardened heart in 2 Samuel 11 during the Bathsheba incident…

The narrative of David's adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah (2 Samuel 11) is presented as a tragic illustration of a heart that has lost its tenderness, showing how a once-godly man can fall into calculated sin when his heart is no longer sensitive to God's word.

Came to pass at the return of the year at the time when kings go out to battle that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel and they destroyed the children of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David tarried at the time of the return of the king. At Jerusalem and would God the next verse read, but his heart smote him.

48:14 - 48:39 Read in full sermon

The point: Be ready for a lifetime of dealing with your heart to keep it tender; otherwise, bail out of ministry preparation.

The process of a heart hardening is described as resisting the 'smiting' of conscience and building a 'callous on the folds of his heart,' illustrating how small, unaddressed sins can lead to greater moral insensitivity and eventual catastrophic fall.

and I don't know what the instances were I have often studied the narrative and I have some tentative convictions as to what those incidents were that led to this hardness and I have not time to go back to that into what is but my own theory of the skimpy biblical data but this much is clear if the first time after the cave when David's heart smote him for that sin just watching one TV program that he knew was borderline in its purity and his heart smote him but he said oh well you know no harm just looking at one magazine and several pages on it that cause if someone could have come to David ...

57:16 - 58:43 Read in full sermon

The point: When you perceive spiritual or temporal need, respond with appropriate action rather than shutting up the bowels of compassion.

The combined gifts of great preachers (Whitefield, Spurgeon, Edwards, Chalmers) are imagined in one person, but if their ministry does not flow from love, it is likened to 'clanging on the top of a garbage can,' emphasizing the absolute necessity of love in ministry.

You men aspiring to the ministry, read periodically 1 Corinthians 13. If I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not love, I'm nothing. If God were to combine in you all of the passion of a Whitefield, the eloquence of a Spurgeon, the brilliant analytical mind of a Jonathan Edwards, and the thunderous voice of a Chalmers, roll it all together in one preacher, hold down a pulpit and preach to packed auditoriums for 50 years, and if it doesn't flow out of love, God says it's like clanging on the top of a garbage can.

63:04 - 63:42 Read in full sermon

The point: When you perceive spiritual or temporal need, respond with appropriate action rather than shutting up the bowels of compassion.

Pastoral ministry is described with metaphors of reaching out 'the bread of life' to feed people and 'physician's fingers to cut out their cancers,' only to have them 'snap at your fingers' or 'cut off your hand,' illustrating the vulnerability and potential for pain in loving, responsive pastoral care.

And then to have the very people for whom you're pouring out your life when you know God's given you the ability that, humanly speaking, could have made you wealthy, could have made you at least somewhat well-known in certain circles. And when before God you know you've turned your back upon all of that to spend and be spent for the good of God, to spend and be spent for the good of God, to spend and be spent for the good of God, to spend and be spent for the good of God, to spend and be spent for the good of God, to spend and be spent for the good of God, to spend and be spent for the good of...

65:48 - 66:32 Read in full sermon

The point: Cry to God to give you a well-guarded, constantly kept, continually sensitive, and love-suffused, vulnerable, and self-giving heart.

The story of Gideon's army being thinned out by God is used to illustrate that God's concern is never with the number of His servants, but with their quality and dependence on Him, reinforcing the call for true men of God.

God's problem has never been the number. Just the opposite. When he would conquer through his servant Gideon, he says, you've got too many. Tell all the sissies to go home.

67:03 - 67:14 Read in full sermon