Foundation and Time of Election

The point: Ensure your praise is scriptural, rooted in doctrinal concepts like election, not just 'woozy, ethereal devotion'.

Martin contrasts the setting of election in praise with a polemical setting, arguing that true belief in election on one's knees will also lead to defending it on one's feet, but without devotion, defense is empty.

We're not looking into his books whose mind is filled with great circles of debate. We're looking into the prayer closet of a humble servant of Christ who when contemplating his salvation in Christ breaks out into this hymn of praise and says Blessed be this God the God who hath chosen us. And so the setting of this statement of the fact of election is a setting of praise. A setting of worship which on the one hand should be a word of warning to those who think that such doctrines as election have no relationship to devotion and are in fact the very death of devotion. Not so in the thinking of...

3:37 - 4:59 Read in full sermon

Driving home: If he is slain in the mind and purpose of God from before the foundation of the world then there must have been a people conceived of in the mind of God for whom he would be slain therefore in election there is this inse…

Martin quotes Thomas Goodwin's analogy of God's electing purposes as a womb where Christ the head is first born, followed by all the members, illustrating the inseparability of Christ and his people in election.

mystery of it he is never conceived of as a mediator apart from those on whose behalf he will be surety for their salvation so that Goodwin in his quaint and vivid Puritan fashion uses this analogy he says picture God's electing purposes as a womb and in that womb is a body with a head and all its members and he says as the womb of election is exercised Christ the head is first born and all the members follow so that in God's electing purposes Christ is the elect one appointed to the place of a mediator and a redeemer but a redeemer of whom all the members of his body so that election is never...

19:11 - 20:40 Read in full sermon

The point: Stand back amazed and blinded with the light of this glorious fact that your salvation is not a sudden impulse but the purpose of God before the foundation of the world.

Martin tells a story of responding to a vagrant's sudden hunger versus a young man receiving an inheritance planned long before his birth, illustrating the difference between gratitude for an immediate response and gratitude for a pre-planned, eternal purpose of love.

impulse to a newly discovered need no no it was the purpose benefit of God before the foundation of the world let me illustrate you're sitting at your meal today and your wife or your friend whoever's provided the meal for you has planned for four six eight people whatever it is and so you're sitting there and you're just well dug into the meal and you're having a great time eating it and all of a sudden the doorbell rings or there's a knock at the door and you go out and hear some poor vagrant somebody who has no place he can call his home and he's come to your door and he says look I'm hungr...

39:41 - 41:09 Read in full sermon

The point: Let the truth of God's sovereignty and certainty in election create confidence and bring you to a place of deep humility.

Martin uses the illustration of an archway into salvation, with 'Whosoever will let him come' on the front, and 'Chosen in him before the foundation of the world' on the back, to explain that one can only know their election after coming to Christ by faith.

it's what he talked about here in Ephesians 1 4 that fed the streams both of confidence and of humility it was his consciousness that he was a chosen vessel in Christ before the foundation of the world ah but someone sits here this morning and says yes but I'm not a Christian how can I know if I was chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world well the answer is the only way you can know is the way everybody else had to find out there's some people here this morning who are confident they were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world and you know how they came to that confide...

48:32 - 50:00 Read in full sermon