But God...

Driving home: And our zeal for godliness will be in direct proportion to our appreciation of grace. If there is something lacking in our zeal for godliness, it is because there is something waning in our appreciation of grace.

Martin uses the common 'before and after' pictures from diet advertisements to illustrate Paul's contrast of humanity's condition before and after grace.

And so the apostle who is concerned that the Ephesians be stirred up to godliness begins by, as it were, fanning the fires of appreciation for the grace of God. And few things are more calculated to increase our appreciation of grace than to set in vivid contrast what we were by nature what we now are by the grace of God. Now then, addressing ourselves more particularly then to that first paragraph, we have studied together verses 1 to 3, the before picture. Some of you have seen advertisements for a certain diet program and they show this big, fat, blubbery woman in the before picture and thi...

7:38 - 8:45 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin argues that understanding salvation as entirely of God's grace produces genuine, unmanipulated praise, contrasting it with the self-praise of the Pharisee or the crippled…

Martin describes a hypothetical scenario in an Ephesian assembly where someone tries to 'pump up' praise after reading Ephesians 2, highlighting the folly and profanation of forced worship.

The God, the King of everlasting grace. Do you see the folly then of trying to pump up praise from God's people by the gestures and the pressures of the personality of the song? Do you see how utterly stupid it is, let alone to say irreligious? Can you imagine coming into the Ephesian assembly after an elder had read this epistle and the saints of God in all probability said, Elder So-and-so, read that part over again!

26:13 - 26:46 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not fear economic busts, but rather fear God's displeasure and shrinking unbelief; cultivate unshakable confidence in God's ordained works.

Martin cites historical examples, including the settling of America, to demonstrate that the most energetic advancements in the kingdom have come from those who believed in God's sovereignty.

Just do a little reading of history, will you? The most energetic advancements in the kingdom of Jesus Christ, by and large, almost without exception, have come from individuals and movements that have believed and loved and preached what I'm preaching this morning. What brought men to the bleak shores of Indian land? And I'll call it United States of America.

44:06 - 44:34 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not fear economic busts, but rather fear God's displeasure and shrinking unbelief; cultivate unshakable confidence in God's ordained works.

Martin shares a personal anecdote about being born during the Great Depression ('last great bust') to illustrate that economic hardship can build character in ways affluence cannot, shifting focus from material fear to spiritual fear.

Everyone says we will have the great bust. Some of us were born in the midst of the last great bust and were alive to talk about it. And some of us thank God for those years of penny-pinching and scraping for what it did in our characters. Things that our affluence had never done. My friend, the thing you should fear is not a great economic bust. The thing you should fear is that God would not be pleased to put forth His honor. The thing you should fear is shrinking unbelief that cowers and shivers before every hobgoblin that comes before us. What a denial of God. Oh, what a confident people w...

45:51 - 46:50 Read in full sermon