How God Brings Sinners to Life

The point: Don't carry a bad conscience with you in sunny days unless you're willing to do it to live with it in cloudy days. The best preparation for a dark providence is to have a conscience like that of the prophet, who, when th…

The death of the widow's son is described as a 'double darkness' because it strikes a child before their full lifespan, illustrating the profound impact of such dark providences.

of that visit instead of her last meal she has a never failing supply and her son and she are spared his little skinny body is fleshed out again and yet into that situation comes this terrible dark providence of death death which always brings darkness but a double darkness when it strikes little ones before they've lived out their three score and ten years and certainly god has something to teach us as he had something to teach his servant elijah in preparation for that greater conquest upon mount carmel and last week we looked at two of the basic lessons of this passage the first one it teac...

3:22 - 4:04 Read in full sermon

The point: Don't carry a bad conscience with you in sunny days unless you're willing to do it to live with it in cloudy days. The best preparation for a dark providence is to have a conscience like that of the prophet, who, when th…

The sudden shift from a sunny day to a cloudy day, or a bright morning to a dark night, illustrates the unexpected suddenness of dark providences in life.

when a sunny day suddenly becomes a cloudy day and the smile of god is hidden behind some terrible foreboding dark billowy clouds of what seemed to be an angry providence and we saw first of all their relative certainty the scripture tells us in the world ye shall have tribulation secondly their unexpected suddenness who would ever thought when they had their pancakes that morning that before nightfall she'd be cradling the lifeless blue form of her little boy upon her bosom she never thought it and often the day that begins in brightness ends in darkness

4:49 - 5:29 Read in full sermon

The point: Don't carry a bad conscience with you in sunny days unless you're willing to do it to live with it in cloudy days. The best preparation for a dark providence is to have a conscience like that of the prophet, who, when th…

The image of the mother cradling the 'lifeless blue form of her little boy' is used to vividly portray the unexpected and sudden nature of death and dark providences.

when a sunny day suddenly becomes a cloudy day and the smile of god is hidden behind some terrible foreboding dark billowy clouds of what seemed to be an angry providence and we saw first of all their relative certainty the scripture tells us in the world ye shall have tribulation secondly their unexpected suddenness who would ever thought when they had their pancakes that morning that before nightfall she'd be cradling the lifeless blue form of her little boy upon her bosom she never thought it and often the day that begins in brightness ends in darkness

4:49 - 5:29 Read in full sermon

The point: Don't carry a bad conscience with you in sunny days unless you're willing to do it to live with it in cloudy days. The best preparation for a dark providence is to have a conscience like that of the prophet, who, when th…

A bad conscience is likened to a 'terrible companion in calamity,' emphasizing the importance of a clear conscience as preparation for dark providences.

and in the last place we saw the best preparation for the dark providence is walking day by day with a good conscience an evil conscience a nagging conscience is a terrible companion in calamity for the moment this calamity comes she says what have you done brought this to pass to bring my sin to remembrance and i again exhort you don't carry a bad conscience with you in sunny days unless you're willing to do it to live with it in cloudy days. The best preparation for a dark providence is to have a conscience like that of the prophet, who, when this dark providence comes,

6:54 - 7:38 Read in full sermon

Driving home: And we're cursed in the professing evangelical church today, not so much with the former. That was the problem of a bygone day when they had mighty preachers and when people knew that God had to do the work and that gene…

Jesus' comparison of the Spirit's work to the wind is used to highlight the mystery and inscrutability of how God imparts spiritual life, warning against rigid formulas.

The ways of God in imparting spiritual life are a mystery. The Lord Jesus said in the third chapter of John, when speaking to Nicodemus about the impartation of spiritual life, that the ways of the Spirit are like the wind. Thou canst not tell whence it cometh, whither it goeth. You hear the sound thereof.

8:05 - 8:27 Read in full sermon

Driving home: And we're cursed in the professing evangelical church today, not so much with the former. That was the problem of a bygone day when they had mighty preachers and when people knew that God had to do the work and that gene…

The practice of groups having a 'step-by-step pigeon-holed' process of conversion is used to illustrate the danger of reinterpreting spiritual experience or creating false converts.

And so, whenever we are talking about how God imparts spiritual life, we must never think in terms of hard, fast steps and categories by which God always leads men and women to the enjoyment and sharing of divine life. Whenever you find a group of people, I don't care if it is a church or denomination or some evangelistic movement, that pretty well has the process of conversion step-by-step pigeon-holed, one of two things is true. Either they are reinterpreting their valid spiritual experience in terms of the accepted pattern. You know, in certain circles, you dare not talk about being convert...

8:35 - 9:20 Read in full sermon

Driving home: And we're cursed in the professing evangelical church today, not so much with the former. That was the problem of a bygone day when they had mighty preachers and when people knew that God had to do the work and that gene…

Jesus' words about the Pharisees making converts 'two-fold more the child of hell' are quoted to illustrate the danger of man-made conversion patterns that lack genuine spiritual life.

Now, that's not too bad if that happens. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be done, but at least it's not damning. But the second reason why, in certain circles, the spiritual experience takes on a certain mold is this, that people, on the sheer steam of Adamic nature and Adamic energy, are meeting an acceptable pattern of so-called conversion and are nothing more than what Jesus said the Pharisees made, he says, you compass land and sea to make a convert and when you've made him, you make him two-fold more the child of hell than yourself.

10:02 - 10:37 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin briefly considers and rejects an analogical approach to the boy's resurrection for preaching, then shifts to the woman's spiritual state by nature. He describes her as a…

The prophet accepting the fact of the boy's death is an analogy for the necessity of acknowledging spiritual death before life can be imparted.

First of all, the prophet accepts the fact of death. Accepts the fact of it. If there was anything less than death, he'd have tried to wiggle his arms and help him, you see. But he was just plain sure not dead.

12:33 - 12:48 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin briefly considers and rejects an analogical approach to the boy's resurrection for preaching, then shifts to the woman's spiritual state by nature. He describes her as a…

The prophet coming into 'living contact with death' (a live man touching a dead boy) is an analogy for how God brings living men into contact with dead men to impart spiritual life.

And before life is ever imparted, somebody's got to accept the fact of death. You see, you can draw that out. And then the prophet comes in living contact with death. A live man touches a dead boy.

12:48 - 13:01 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin briefly considers and rejects an analogical approach to the boy's resurrection for preaching, then shifts to the woman's spiritual state by nature. He describes her as a…

Elijah presenting a boy with 'all the marks of life' is an analogy for how genuine spiritual life imparted by God will always have visible manifestations.

A source of life comes from outside of him and enters him. And then there are all the manifestations of life. Elijah didn't bring down a boy still blue with death and cold with death and say, here, mama, here's your boy. Well, he's still dead.

13:16 - 13:32 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The first principle of how God brings sinners to life is His sovereign act of sending a divine messenger. Martin uses the example of Elijah being sent specifically to the…

The prophet arriving at the 'precise, precise moment' before the widow's last meal illustrates God's sovereign timing in bringing a divine messenger.

She's going out, she thinks, to make her last meal and die in her hopelessness, material and spiritual. But the prophet of God comes to her at that precise, precise moment. Suppose he'd come a few days later. For all we know, she'd have been dead and had gone from a hopeless existence now into a hopeless existence for eternity.

18:25 - 18:53 Read in full sermon

Driving home: People say, well, if I believe in God, if I believe that God had chosen from eternity to save a people, I wouldn't witness, I wouldn't preach the gospel. And I want to say to people, if you say that, you tell me somethin…

Paul's endurance of 'shipwreck, Roman prisons, rats crawling over me, people spitting in my face, throwing stones' is an example of the suffering a divine messenger undergoes for the elect's sake.

He says in 2 Timothy 1, 10, 2, 10, Therefore I endure all things. As a gospel preacher, I endure everything. Shipwreck, Roman prisons, rats crawling over me, people spitting in my face, throwing stones upon me. I endure all things for the elect's sake.

22:33 - 22:51 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The first principle of how God brings sinners to life is His sovereign act of sending a divine messenger. Martin uses the example of Elijah being sent specifically to the…

The Holy Spirit forbidding Paul to preach in Asia and Bithynia, and then guiding him to Macedonia, illustrates God's sovereign direction of his messengers.

But now the specific doors through which he's to walk in the entire Roman Empire, who directs which ones he shall walk through? I read in Acts 16.6, and when they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden of the Holy Spirit, to speak the word in Asia. And when they came over against Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not.

24:32 - 24:59 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The first principle of how God brings sinners to life is His sovereign act of sending a divine messenger. Martin uses the example of Elijah being sent specifically to the…

God putting Peter in a trance and sending an angel to Cornelius illustrates God's sovereign arrangement for the communication of the message of life.

God sovereignly brings a divine messenger. You see it in the 10th chapter of Acts. He's got to put Peter in a trance and give him a vision. And knock some providence out and knock some prejudice out of his heart.

25:12 - 25:24 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The first principle of how God brings sinners to life is His sovereign act of sending a divine messenger. Martin uses the example of Elijah being sent specifically to the…

The fact that 'millions have lived and died to whom God never brought a divine messenger' highlights the privilege of hearing the gospel.

Millions have lived and died to whom God never brought a divine messenger. Whole civilizations have risen and fallen and gone into oblivion without one watt of gospel light.

25:56 - 26:14 Read in full sermon

The point: Do you thank God that he sovereignly brought a divine messenger to you?

The 'dim outlines of the character of God penned by the creation itself' are contrasted with the 'fine details' revealed in Christ, emphasizing the greater accountability of gospel rejecters.

When men look up to the heavens above them and out to the world around them and see, as it were, the imprint of a sovereign God, upon all of creation, but then they exchange that truth of God for a lie, as mentioned in Romans 1, they are without excuse before God.

27:10 - 27:27 Read in full sermon

The point: Do you thank God that he sovereignly brought a divine messenger to you?

The rhetorical question of thanking God for not being born in New Guinea or Quebec highlights the sovereign grace of being born where gospel light is present.

How long has it been, since you thanked God you weren't born over in New Guinea,

28:26 - 28:32 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Well, you see, not only must the sovereign God bring the message, but that same God must powerfully apply that message to the heart and the conscience.

The daily miracle of the unfailing cruse and barrel served as a 'living demonstration' that the prophet's word was truth, powerfully applying the message to the widow's heart.

And how does he do it with this woman? He uses three things. He uses the miracle of that cruz and that barrel. Every morning she went and saw a living demonstration that the word of this prophet, of the God of Israel, was more than just a lot of religious gibberish.

31:31 - 31:53 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Well, you see, not only must the sovereign God bring the message, but that same God must powerfully apply that message to the heart and the conscience.

Elijah's consistent godly example, which the widow had to confess despite her irritation, acted 'like salt upon an open wound in her conscience,' powerfully applying the message.

Not only a miracle, but she had the example of his life. She watched this man. As we saw last week, at the very moment when she wished she could find something to throw up into his face, she has to say, What have I to do with thee, O man of God? It irritates me that you're a man of God, but I've got to confess it anyway.

32:13 - 32:32 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The second principle is God's powerful application of the message to the heart and conscience. Martin explains how God used the miracle of the cruse and barrel, Elijah's godly…

The inability to explain away the life of a godly person as 'religious gibberish' serves as a 'barb in their conscience,' powerfully applying the message of its truth.

If you believe this in this message, then you are a good believer, and if you are a man, That somebody's crossed your path and you've said,

34:54 - 35:00 Read in full sermon

The point: I want you to be honest with me. Try as you like, for sudden sickness overcomes you and you don't know quite what it is. Don't you think about the God who made you and the possibility that you might be standing before hi…

A 'near miss in a car accident' is used as an example of how God uses circumstances to bring the truth of the message home with 'piercing power' to an impenitent heart.

Can't you remember what you did, tried to do, when in your days of impenitence, when the message had already come, but the word had not been applied to your heart with power. Remember that time you had a near miss in a car accident? And how is it where your whole life flashed before you and the truth of the message came home with piercing power. And you said, Oh God, I must get right with you.

36:50 - 37:13 Read in full sermon

The point: I want you to be honest with me. Try as you like, for sudden sickness overcomes you and you don't know quite what it is. Don't you think about the God who made you and the possibility that you might be standing before hi…

Sudden sickness or the thought of 'atomic warfare' are examples of circumstances that cause people, even children, to think about God and judgment, bringing sin to remembrance.

Try as you like, for sudden sickness overcomes you and you don't know quite what it is. Don't you think about the God who made you and the possibility that you might be standing before him pretty soon?

37:29 - 37:42 Read in full sermon

The point: I want you to be honest with me. Try as you like, for sudden sickness overcomes you and you don't know quite what it is. Don't you think about the God who made you and the possibility that you might be standing before hi…

The reflex action of crying 'Oh God, oh God help me' in a foxhole or an out-of-control car illustrates the indelible 'remains of the image of God' that makes us accountable.

And that's why the reflex action of any man or woman, fellow or girl, when they're in what we'd call an unexpected pinch, whether it's the fellow who flocks into the foxhole with shrapnel ripping through his body, whether it's the person whose car is out of control and he sees the pole coming toward him. Why is the first instinct, oh God, oh God help me, why? Why? I'll tell you why.

38:21 - 38:46 Read in full sermon

Driving home: As try as we may, we can't. We can't erase that remains of the image of God that makes us know we're accountable to that God and we'll stand before him in judgment. You can't do it. You can't do it.

Felix trembling before Paul's reasoning about righteousness, temperance, and judgment illustrates that powerful application of the word can lead to conviction, but not necessarily conversion.

And so God not only sovereignly brings the message to this man, but he powerfully applies the word to her heart and conscience. But I say that's not even enough because I read in the book of Acts that as Paul said, Paul reasoned of righteousness and temperance and judgment to a certain king. What happened to him?

39:07 - 39:26 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The third and final principle is God's gracious enabling of a hearty embrace of the word of salvation. Martin explains that the widow's confession, 'Now I know that thou art a man…

A person 'reaching up' to snatch only the 'nice little word' like 'God so loved the world' while discarding words of repentance or submission is an analogy for self-delusion, not saving faith.

Now see, it's not faith when a person, as it were, reaches up through and says, Wait, there's the word about repent. Throw that aside. There's the word about submit to Christ. I'll throw that aside.

48:34 - 48:43 Read in full sermon

The point: Pray that God will make you an Elijah, in the way that Elijah was the instrument through which this woman was brought to life. That you will be his messenger. That you will be the instrument through which conviction will…

The rhetorical question of praying for Elijah's miraculous powers (raising dead boys, unfailing oil) is used to clarify that the exhortation to be an 'Elijah' is about being an instrument of spiritual life, not physical miracles.

You mean, should I pray God give me the ability to raise up dead boys? No, I don't think you've got any grounds to pray that. Well, should I pray that God will put me in competition with Shoprite and Pathmark, And be able to turn out barrels and fuses, And be able to turn out bottles and fuses of oil that never fail? No, I mean, pray that God will make you an Elijah, In the way that Elijah was the instrument through which this woman was brought to life.

50:28 - 50:55 Read in full sermon

The point: Be obedient to the revealed will of God. Just mind the Lord, and mind your own business.

Paul's instruction to 'study to be quiet and do your own business' is quoted to emphasize the importance of obedience to God's revealed will in one's own sphere, rather than seeking spectacular tasks.

How can you be an Elijah? Just mind the Lord, and mind your own business. Just mind the Lord, and mind your own business. We're going to see next Sunday morning, Lord, but that's what Paul told the people.

51:27 - 51:38 Read in full sermon

The point: Be consistent in the details of your own personal life. God wants that message in flesh and blood, and he wants your flesh and blood to be the attestation of its truth and its power.

Peter asking Jesus, 'Lord, what about John?' and Jesus' response, 'What is that to thee? Follow thou me?' is used to illustrate the principle of 'mind your own business' in obedience to God.

He didn't say like John, and Lord, what shall this man do? The Lord told him, mind his own business. You remember?

52:08 - 52:12 Read in full sermon

The point: Be consistent in the details of your own personal life. God wants that message in flesh and blood, and he wants your flesh and blood to be the attestation of its truth and its power.

The idea of 'ten easy rules on how to lead people to Christ' is dismissed, emphasizing that being a 'soul winner' like Elijah requires consistent godly living, not just techniques.

How do you become, quote, a soul winner? Not by going to a class, ten easy rules on how to lead people to Christ. Take those rules and burn them.

52:58 - 53:06 Read in full sermon

The point: Be prayerful that the God alone who can impart life will impart it.

The connection between Elijah's faithfulness to an individual in Zarephath and God's vindication of his word before a multitude on Mount Carmel illustrates that faithfulness in small things leads to greater opportunities.

You see any connection between Mount Carmel and Zarephath?

54:49 - 54:52 Read in full sermon