Q and A. What About Those Promises?

Driving home: A divine promise that our children will be saved but yet they're not necessarily all saved. Just like here we have a credible profession which does not automatically guarantee that the person's and who makes a credible p…

Martin quotes Jewett's critique of Bushnell's view that parental failure is the sole reason for children's spiritual failure, highlighting how this theology can be cruel to conscientious parents.

No. That's right. But that's the way that often is taken in order to evade the pressure of the fact that, as Berkhoff sadly admits, experience teaches that all of our children are not saved. Now, Paul K. Jewett

19:06 - 19:39 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not use the truth that God honors parental fealty to abuse the truth or create a scapegoat for theological failures.

Martin uses the rhetorical question 'Show me the perfect parent?' to illustrate the impossibility and cruelty of a doctrine that demands parental perfection for God's promise of salvation to be fulfilled.

Though every lawful incentive should be employed to move parents to higher resolves of consecration in the parental office, this doctrine of you do your part and be a good parent and God will do his can become a counsel of despair, a millstone about the necks of conscientious parents. Bushnell goes on to say, show me the case where the whole conduct of the parent has been such as it should be to produce the best effects. And Jewett remarks, we venture

22:45 - 23:28 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not pour the salt of your own error and self-justification into the wounds of God's people.

Martin compares those who blame grieving parents for their children's lostness to Job's comforters, emphasizing that such a doctrine adds grief and pours 'salt of your own error' into their wounds.

And our brethren become Job's comforters when they come to the people of God in the midst of their pain and their affliction over their lost children whom they've loved and loved and loved whom they've prayed over whom they've sought in all not perfectly none of us is perfect in the training of our children but whom they've sought to train with tears and with words and with discipline and yet God in his sovereignty has not saved them.

43:42 - 44:13 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin addresses Old Testament texts like Proverbs 22:15, explaining that they are general observations about God's providential dealings, not covenantal promises that guarantee…

Martin draws an analogy between blaming financial trouble on lack of diligence or sickness on lack of faith, and blaming children's lostness on parental unfaithfulness, showing it's the same 'spirit' of Job's friends.

of the rod in his general and ordinary dealings with men in providence that God that he has covenantally bound himself to save the children of parents who are faithful in their dealings any more than he is automatically engaged and bound to make you wealthy if you're diligent or to keep you healthy if you're obedient in the way of righteousness and you see it's the same error if someone is having trouble financially then up comes the Job's comforter and says it's because my friend you were not diligent in your work in your work and the same thing happens with sickness if you're sick it's becau...

50:16 - 51:01 Read in full sermon