Lessons About the Christian Life

The point: Resist the attitude that the Bible needs supplementing from other disciplines or sciences.

Elijah's restoration is likened to the Lord Jesus not breaking a bruised reed or quenching smoking flax, illustrating God's tender care for His dejected people.

We spent a number of weeks considering the process by which God himself restored his dejected, despondent, discouraged prophet to a place of usefulness and spiritual virility once more. A wonderful process. A beautiful picture of the Lord Jesus fulfilling his role to his own people as the one who will not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax. If ever you want an illustration of what that means, you just remember 1 Kings 19.

1:49 - 2:22 Read in full sermon

The point: Resist the attitude that the Bible needs supplementing from other disciplines or sciences.

Martin compares Elijah's dejection to his own drooping tomato plants, which he tried to nurture back to life, to illustrate the fragility of life and the need for tender care.

And see the Lord taking this drooping plant, bent over with all of its leaves downward, until you wonder, well, maybe it's even lost its life, like some of my tomato plants that I put in a little early. For a period of time, I wasn't sure, and I tenderly nurtured them and all the rest, but it's obvious now with a couple of good days of warm suns, they lost their life. There was a point I wasn't sure. So I tried to nurture them back to life.

2:22 - 2:46 Read in full sermon

The point: Recognize your own life as a monument to the 'before and after' of God's restorative grace if you have walked long with God.

Elijah's journey into and out of the wilderness is compared to a 'before and after' advertisement for paint or siding, illustrating the transformative power of God's restorative grace.

straight, and then we shall move for the bulk of our message into the significance or the lessons of these facts. And there are three or four main areas of very profound and helpful lessons concerning the Christian life. All right, the facts of the narrative. What does the narrative tell us? In verse 19 we read, so he departed thence. Can you picture the difference in the trip out of the wilderness from that into the wilderness? You pick up your magazine and you see a certain paint being advertised or some kind of aluminum siding, and you see the before and the after. That old ramshackled hous...

5:48 - 6:47 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin reads and vividly recounts the narrative of Elijah finding Elisha plowing, casting his mantle upon him, and Elisha's immediate, resolute response, including sacrificing his…

Martin describes ancient plowing with oxen and sharpened tree branches to help the audience visualize Elisha's work and understand the context of 'twelve yoke of oxen'.

Now again, you think of a plow hitched up to a John Deere or to a farm hall, and you'd say, what in the world are they doing with 12 plows out there? Well, you didn't have those nice, big, heavy-gauge steel plows that could turn over a 12-inch furrow. No, no. You had part of...

10:04 - 10:20 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin reads and vividly recounts the narrative of Elijah finding Elisha plowing, casting his mantle upon him, and Elisha's immediate, resolute response, including sacrificing his…

Martin vividly narrates the scene of Elijah casting his mantle on Elisha, emphasizing the lack of conversation and the immediate, symbolic nature of the call, inviting the listener to 'put yourself in the woods watching all this'.

There seems to be an intimation that he knew, had some previous acquaintance with him, for he apparently, without any direction externally, goes right to this specific one whom God has ordered him to anoint. And he does a strange thing. Put yourself in the woods looking out through the trees at this rugged-looking man, and you see a broken individual coming across the field and walking up to a fellow, not shaking his hand or saying hello, but taking a shawl off his shoulder and throwing it upon the shoulder of this other man, turning on his heel and starting to walk away. And lo and behold, as...

11:32 - 12:21 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin reads and vividly recounts the narrative of Elijah finding Elisha plowing, casting his mantle upon him, and Elisha's immediate, resolute response, including sacrificing his…

The dramatic act of Elisha killing his oxen and burning his plow is described to highlight his radical and immediate commitment to God's call, leaving no possibility of return to his former life.

He finds the sharpest knife around, and he sticks it into the juggler vein of these two oxen. The blood spurts out, and they fall dead upon the ground. You say, What in the world kind of a guy is this? What's he doing?

12:52 - 13:03 Read in full sermon

The point: When the Holy Spirit savingly reveals Christ, gladly abandon your most cherished possessions and embrace Jesus as your all in all.

The parables of the merchant seeking goodly pearls and the man finding treasure in a field are used to illustrate the radical abandonment of all else when Christ is savingly revealed to the heart.

The effectual call of God. It was God who laid hold of him. By way of application let me say that this is I wouldn't call it a type but it's a beautiful analogy of the effectual calling of God unto salvation as well as his effectual calling to special service. But the scripture tells us in the 13th of Matthew that the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant seeking goodly pearls who when he finds one pearl of great price what does he do?

23:08 - 23:38 Read in full sermon

The point: Christian parents, project a biblical concept of cultivating the better gifts, recognizing the ministry as the highest privilege, rather than being materialistically oriented.

Martin recounts an epitaph from a missionary's grave: 'The vows of God are upon me, and I may not stop to play with earthly shadows,' illustrating unswerving commitment to God's call despite immense personal cost.

It's obvious to all what's down in here. That's the kind of man God lays hold of. The man whom he has brought to the place of unswerving commitment to his call. He's ratifying openly what he had experienced inwardly. It's my privilege to be with Pastor Huebner up in Massachusetts several summers ago for a few days of vacation. And outside of his church there, there's a grave, a graveyard. And I was looking at some of the epitaphs, and I came across this one of a missionary who had gone to some part of Africa, and in fulfilling the call of God, had buried his wife and four children on the missi...

40:00 - 41:04 Read in full sermon

The point: Young men preparing for the ministry, make 'Lord, give me balanced piety' one of your constant prayers.

The story of Laban chiding Jacob for not allowing his daughters to kiss him goodbye is used to show that a formal farewell was an act of respect, underscoring Elisha's balanced piety.

Well, what did his parents ever do to deserve a rude desertion with no explanation and with no proper formal goodbye? If you'll read through other passages in the Old Testament, you'll see that this idea, when a young woman was to leave with her husband, she'd kiss her parents goodbye. You remember Laban came to Jacob and chided. He said, you've taken away my daughters and you didn't let them kiss me goodbye.

46:35 - 46:59 Read in full sermon

The point: Young men preparing for the ministry, make 'Lord, give me balanced piety' one of your constant prayers.

Martin uses the jarring image of someone who prays like an angel but has the manners of an ape to illustrate a lack of balanced piety and the disconnect between spiritual claims and practical living.

Nothing is more jarring to people than to hear someone pray like an angel and have them in their home for a meal and find he's got the manners of an ape.

48:44 - 48:54 Read in full sermon

The point: Young men preparing for the ministry, make 'Lord, give me balanced piety' one of your constant prayers.

The proverbial phrase 'drives like a preacher' is used to highlight the shame brought upon the ministry by indifference to speed laws, illustrating a lack of balanced piety in practical life.

The person who sees no relationship between his exegesis of Romans 5 and the speed with which he drives his automobile on the Jersey Turnpike. Isn't it a shame that preachers are proverbial for their indifference to speed laws? They'll say that that drives like a preacher. Shame on preachers.

49:09 - 49:27 Read in full sermon

The point: Young men preparing for the ministry, make 'Lord, give me balanced piety' one of your constant prayers.

The negative proverb associated with 'preacher's kids' is cited as another example of how a lack of balanced piety in a minister's family can bring shame to the ministry.

It's a blotch upon the ministry. Preacher's kids have become proverbial. Oh, he's just a preacher's kid. What are you doing?

49:27 - 49:34 Read in full sermon

The point: As a church, when praying for laborers, look for young men who want to learn and serve humbly, not those with a 'gift of gab' and swagger.

John the Baptist's joy when his disciples went to Jesus is compared to a best man at a wedding who rejoices when all attention is on the bridegroom, illustrating true humility and lack of jealousy.

God doesn't use men who are going about with the cockstruck, but men who've learned what it is to take the place of a servant. You see, they thought they'd get John all upset. They came to him and said, Hey, John, look, some of your crowd's going after Jesus. He said, Hallelujah, that's what I was here for.

52:31 - 52:50 Read in full sermon