Framework – Our Obligations to God

The point: If you stay in the house, you ought to have your bottom spanked for willful disobedience to a known obligation.

A parent asking a child to play outside is not an obligation, but a request. If the parent commands the child to play outside, it becomes an obligation, illustrating the difference between voluntary action and binding duty.

Now an obligation is a duty of binding responsibility. For instance, you children, mom or dad may say to you, well, son, honey, Sally, Mary, whatever your name may be, would you like to go outside and play in the yard this morning? Now when she asks you that question, she is not laying a duty or an obligation upon you. What she's doing is, is seeking to understand whether you would voluntarily like to go and play out in the yard.

5:32 - 6:10 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin illustrates how grace transforms the heart to delight in duty through the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. He explains that God writes His law on the hearts of the converted…

Saul, breathing out threatenings against the church, is arrested by Christ on the road to Damascus. His immediate response, 'Lord, what will You have me to do?', illustrates how grace binds the heart to delight in duty.

The scripture says he was like a mad dog, or like we see in some of the old fairy stories, a fire-breathing dragon. It says he was breathing out threatenings and slaughters upon the church. He was on his way to Damascus with letters from the officials to give him power to find Christians and go into houses and snuff them out, as it were, and commit them to bonds and to prison. And on his way, it says, oh, the Lord said, now, enough's enough.

9:52 - 10:23 Read in full sermon

The point: When duty calls us to part with certain sins that have become as precious to us and as much a part of us as our right hand and our right eye, what does Jesus say you have to do with them? He says, If thy hand offend thee…

The Christian life is likened to running a marathon, requiring endurance and pressing through difficulties ('hitting the wall') rather than stopping to congratulate oneself, emphasizing determined performance.

Having these many witnesses, the writer says, let us lay aside every sin and the weight that does so easily beset us and run with patience, endurance, the race that is set before us. The Christian life is likened to a marathon race that must be run with endurance. When you do what the runners say, hit the wall at the 20th mile and everything in your body and your mind is saying, Quick, you fool! And you've got to press through the barrier until you cross the line and obtain the reef.

19:23 - 19:58 Read in full sermon

The point: When duty calls us to part with certain sins that have become as precious to us and as much a part of us as our right hand and our right eye, what does Jesus say you have to do with them? He says, If thy hand offend thee…

The Christian life is compared to a warrior standing on a hill, constantly fighting off enemy soldiers, illustrating the continuous, determined struggle against sin.

Hebrews 12, You have not yet resisted unto blood, striving or agonizing against sin. It is likened unto a warrior standing on a hill that has been occupied and all of the enemy soldiers keep coming up from every side and he's hacking and whacking and shooting his arrows and standing his ground. That's the imagery of Ephesians 6. Stand, having done all, stand, stand therefore, girded with the whole armor of God.

20:55 - 21:26 Read in full sermon

The point: When duty calls us to part with certain sins that have become as precious to us and as much a part of us as our right hand and our right eye, what does Jesus say you have to do with them? He says, If thy hand offend thee…

Jesus' command to cut off a hand or pluck out an eye if it causes sin is used as a metaphor for the determined, decisive action required to part with cherished sins, even if it feels like a painful amputation.

Now I could go on and multiply the images from the New Testament that teach us that devotion to God involves not only a clear understanding of our obligations to God, but a determined performance of them. Yes, it is a performance in the strength of the Lord, in dependence upon the Lord, in the power of the Spirit of the Lord, I fully understand it, but it is nonetheless a determined performance of our duties. So that when duty calls us to part with certain sins that have become as precious to us and as much a part of us as our right hand and our right eye, what does Jesus say you have to do wi...

21:26 - 22:31 Read in full sermon

The point: That is your supreme and solemn obligation before God, to guard your heart above everything else that you would guard.

Martin uses his wedding band as an example of something valuable to guard, contrasting it with the supreme importance of guarding one's heart, which is above all other things.

Because only out of the heart are the issues of life. Now, that doesn't mean you shouldn't guard your valuables. I treasure and guard my wedding band. It's a declaration, in all places and in all times, that I am joyfully and voluntarily committed to one woman in the sacred bonds of marriage.

29:57 - 30:20 Read in full sermon

The point: There's some of you who can remember when the slightest whisper of God's rebuke from his word tore your heart it left a red bloodline upon your heart. Can you remember? ... Now you can sit and drink in that filled hour a…

Martin recounts how his hands became calloused from construction work, losing their tenderness. This illustrates how a heart can become hardened and insensitive to God's Word through repeated disobedience and neglect.

When I used to do construction work summers my hands at the end of the school year usually looked like a student's hands. But by the end of the summer they looked like a laborer's hands. The first day I would go to take the block the old cinder block and concrete block and carry them around and line them up for the mason I'd come home and my hands sometimes would even have slight strokes of redness where skin had been torn off they were so tender they felt every impress of every little cinder because they were soft hands. But at the end of the summer I could throw around ten and twelve inch bl...

38:09 - 39:13 Read in full sermon