Ours is a Peculiarly Wicked Generation

Driving home: So that by nature we are not the children of God spiritually, though we are his creatures. We are the sons and the daughters of the devil.

Illustrates how all humanity sinned in Adam, just as a child falls with their father during a piggyback ride if the father falls.

For Romans 5 and verse 12 says, Therefore as through one man sin entered into the world and death passed upon all, for that all sinned. When did all sin? All of us sinned in our first father. You children know there are times when you may take a ride on daddy's back and you may have a piggyback ride.

13:29 - 13:53 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin presents his third proposition: there is abundant warrant to designate our present generation as peculiarly wicked. He first supports this by identifying its 'intellectual…

Describes the phrase 'one nation under God' in the pledge as a mere shadow of the once-visceral conviction that God was central to all knowledge in the nation's founding.

So much so that the remnants are still found in our pledge to the flag. One nation under God. One of the few remaining remnants. But it's only a shadow of what once existed as a visceral conviction.

39:39 - 39:58 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The fourth and perhaps worst indication is 'religious apostasy.' Martin argues that despite an abundance of religious forms, this generation denies the power of godliness…

Illustrates how teachers with 'itching ears' relieve people's religious itch without addressing sin or transforming lives, making them 'feel good' rather than 'be better.'

Oh no. They only reach the outer vestibule and people's inveterate itch for something religious. They know how to relieve it. You know kids when you get a itchy place in the middle of your back and you can't quite reach it.

51:28 - 51:40 Read in full sermon

The point: Be saved from this crooked generation by repenting of your sin and believing on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Compares Peter's call to 'be saved from this crooked generation' to throwing a life preserver to a man about to be swept away, urging him to lay hold of Christ.

In the same way, you see a man in a torrential river. It's about to sweep him away. And you throw out to him a life preserver and say, man, lay hold of it. That's what Peter was saying to this generation.

56:41 - 56:57 Read in full sermon

The point: Be salt and light when it's needed most, checking the putrefaction of your neighborhood and shining brightly in the moral and religious darkness.

Explains that salt is most needed as a preservative when the heat is most intense and bacteria would multiply, illustrating the Christian's role in a morally heated, putrefying society.

The privilege of demonstrating where sin abounds, grace does much more abound. And the privilege of being salt and light when it's needed most. When Jesus said in Matthew 5, 13, You are the salt of the earth, the primary connotation of that is you are the means of preserving the earth from putrefaction. There in the eastern countries with no GE or Sears refrigerators, salt was used as a preservative.

68:20 - 68:49 Read in full sermon

The point: Be salt and light when it's needed most, checking the putrefaction of your neighborhood and shining brightly in the moral and religious darkness.

Compares the shining of headlights to the light of individual Christians, noting that the darker the moral and religious night, the brighter their light shines.

Your headlights don't shine very brightly at dusk. But you get a dark night in which the moon is not shining and the stars are covered with clouds. And I tell you those headlights are brilliant lights. And so the darker the moral and religious night in which we live, the brighter does the light of the individual Christian shine.

69:47 - 70:09 Read in full sermon

The point: Thank God that He has brought us to the kingdom for such a time as this, rather than moaning and groaning about how bad it is.

Shares personal anecdotes of performing small acts of kindness (helping with luggage, talking to a widow) while traveling, illustrating how ordinary courtesy can be a powerful witness in a world where common grace has eroded.

What a privilege to be light in such a dark world. I counted a privilege when in a day when common grace is so eroded that just ordinary courtesy is looked upon now as almost something freakish. I love to watch the look on someone's face when just yesterday flying in you do a little act of kindness for someone. When the bin is open and the guy can't reach his bag, you take it out with a smile and hand it to him.

70:09 - 70:40 Read in full sermon