Ingredients, Part 2

Pastor Martin recalls his own father's thick hand attached to a strong arm — no child in his right mind welcomes the rod. He uses it to show even believers never entirely lose the fear of dread when tempted to disobedience.

And no Christian in his right mind welcomes that rod. no child in his right mind if he has a father whose rod means anything trips around saying well daddy I love your rod it's a lovely thing I'd be glad to have it anytime you see fit to give it to me no sir there's one thing I avoided with studious carefulness was my father's thick hand on my bottom because that hand was thick and it was attached to a strong arm and I avoided the things that would provoke that hand attached to that arm to be applied to that part of my anatomy where my father used to take care of me. So then, for even the Chri...

5:38 - 6:28 Read in full sermon

The point: If your Jesus elicits no sense of holy dread or awe, He is not the Christ of the Bible — feed your mind on the whole scriptural revelation of His character.

Martin caricatures the sentimental God of much evangelicalism: one big gushy glob of love. 'All you need to do is push it and a few drops will come over you.' No one trembles before such a deity.

Who trembles before a formless, gushy, ethereal glob of love? Why tremble before that? All you need to do is push it and a few drops of it will come over you and you're all fixed up. There is very little trembling Very little dread in the consciousness Even of unconverted religious people Who sit in the best of our evangelical churches Week after week and year after year Why?

8:07 - 8:34 Read in full sermon

The point: Cultivate an all-pervasive sense of God's presence that extends through every place and circumstance of your life, not just 'religious' moments.

Two pervasive smells — the skunk on the road and the lily in a small room. Martin uses them to teach his children the word 'pervasive' and then applies it: the sense of God's presence must spread through the whole of life.

If you happen to be driving down the highway, and up ahead you see a little dead body on the road, and as you get closer, before you can even see its color, you know what that animal was, don't you? If it was one of those little black animals with a white stripe down the back, before you even get close enough to see it, you can tell that it's a skunk. Why? Because the skunk has a little gland that squirts out something that pervades the atmosphere. You see, it becomes a very pervasive smell. It extends throughout the whole area. Now, when something is pervasive, it extends through everything. ...

13:12 - 14:00 Read in full sermon

A U-2 or orbiting satellite can photograph the color of your car from 80,000 feet. Is that David's picture of God's omniscience in Psalm 139? No — God's hand is upon him, not a distant lens.

there's not a detail that they cannot see from a distance now is that the concept David has God is this great immense all knowing all seeing God and he's up there out there somewhere and everything I do like the great eye of the orbiting spy satellite he sees it he knows it is that the concept no for notice the transition in the next verse verse 5 Thou hast beset me behind and before And laid thy hand upon me Now granted, God has no hand He's using the figure of speech What they tell us is an anthropomorphism

22:47 - 23:34 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not be content with right doctrine about God; labor to make that doctrine experientially pervasive or your life will not show it.

You can memorize every fact about the Grand Canyon, and it makes no difference as you brush your teeth. But if you were suddenly set down in the middle of it, you would not reach for the toothpaste. The presence of God must be experienced, not just catalogued.

You get up in the morning, brush your teeth, go and get your toast and coffee and go off to work. All that you know about the immensity of majesty, the glory of the Grand Canyon doesn't affect you one bit in how you live. But if it were possible, If it were possible, when you got up the next morning, got all these facts about the Grand Canyon, and suddenly you were saddled up on the back of a ray of light that broke over the eastern coast of our country, and within the snap of the fingers you found yourself standing right in the midst of the Grand Canyon, what would happen? I doubt you'd take ...

30:00 - 30:42 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Walk before me and be thou perfect.

Martin forces us to hear Genesis 22 as Abraham heard it: 'Abraham, plunge the knife into the breast of your own son, see the blood spurt, the twitching, the final breath.' God calls his obedience the eloquent testimony that Abraham feared God.

Genesis chapter 22. you remember the command of God was to take Isaac the son of promise and to kill him I like to use the term because again we miss something of the of the heart wrenching nature of God's command when God said verse 2 take now thy son thine only son whom thou lovest and get thee to the land of Moriah and offer him there for a burnt offering that sounds beautiful to us but what he's saying is go out and kill him Abraham as you've plunged the knife into many an animal and you've seen the spurt of blood and you've seen the quiver as life has struggled to maintain itself and then...

35:43 - 36:29 Read in full sermon

The point: In a culture obsessed with sexual filth, learn Joseph's answer — frame the question not as 'will anyone see' but as 'how can I sin against this present God?'

In persistent, cornered temptation Joseph answered, 'How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?' Not a distant God — a God present in the pit, in the rescue, in the exaltation, and in that very room.

Speaking of the master, Joseph says, He is not greater in this house than I, neither hath he kept back anything from me but thee, speaking of Potiphar, because thou art his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? What kind of a God? A God who was out there somewhere?

42:19 - 42:43 Read in full sermon

The point: Notice when you begin to banish the sense of God from your current moment; that is the setup for sin, and the battle must be fought there.

A couple mid-argument are interrupted by a visitor; the presence of a mere fellow human being turns their tone instantly sweet. If that is what human presence does, what should the pervasive presence of God do in us?

Right? If you're having a spat with a wife, just let another fellow human, not even a Christian, come to the door and the presence of another human being is enough to check your words and suddenly you can become so sweet.

44:07 - 44:18 Read in full sermon