God's Planting (1995)

In this part of the sermon: Martin introduces the sermon as a transitional message on fundamental gospel truth, setting the scene in Matthew 15 where Jesus confronts the Pharisees' man-made traditions. He…

Martin references his morning sermon's imagery of Jesus giving a guided tour through a portrait gallery, contrasting the smug Pharisee with the penitent publican, to set up the theme of true vs. false religion.

And so this morning we consider together from the 18th chapter of Luke, our Lord's parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee seeking to open up the passage under the extended imagery of our Lord, giving us a guided tour through a portrait gallery in which we see the smug... self-sufficient Pharisee in contrast to the penitent, broken-hearted publican.

1:04 - 1:36 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin explains Jesus' use of an extended metaphor: God the Father is a domestic gardener, and every true child of God is a plant in His personal garden. He reinforces this…

Martin explains the difference between a simile ('played like a tiger') and a metaphor ('he was a tiger') to clarify Jesus' use of an extended metaphor in the text.

Our Lord is here using verbal imagery. He is seeking with words to paint a picture upon the minds of his disciples. And in this passage Jesus is using the extended metaphor that is a figure of speech in which something is called something else without using the word like. When we say of someone who played very fervently in a game that he played like a tiger, that's a simile.

13:20 - 13:55 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin explains Jesus' use of an extended metaphor: God the Father is a domestic gardener, and every true child of God is a plant in His personal garden. He reinforces this…

God the Father is likened to a domestic gardener or horticulturalist who personally plants and tends plants of His choosing, illustrating His sovereign work in salvation.

But he answered and said every planting which my heavenly Father planted not. Here the Father is likened to a domestic gardener or horticulturalist one who personally plants, plants of his choosing grows plants of his own choosing in his own arrangement. God the Father is likened to a domestic gardener. And then the second part of this imagery, this extended metaphor is every true child of God is likened to a planting of God in his own personal garden. Every planting which my heavenly Father has not planted shall be utterly rooted out taken out of his garden. So the second part of the imagery ...

14:32 - 15:58 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin explains Jesus' use of an extended metaphor: God the Father is a domestic gardener, and every true child of God is a plant in His personal garden. He reinforces this…

The imagery of a tilled plot of land where vegetables are intentionally planted, weeded, and nourished is used to make the 'planting' metaphor very real and understandable.

The Apostle Paul here in dealing with the problem of divisions in the church at Corinth over the various servants of God who had ministered among them is trying to sort out their mistaken concepts about the ministry and in so doing he uses imagery from the farm, from the garden. We read in verse 5 of 1 Corinthians 3 What then is Apollos, what is Paul, ministers through whom you believed and each as the Lord gave to him? I planted Apollos watered but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth anything neither he that waters but God who gives the increase. Now he that plants and ...

16:16 - 17:45 Read in full sermon

Driving home: He has no faculty, to discern them. He cannot know them.

Martin uses the scenario of a blind man offering to guide someone through Jerusalem to illustrate the absurdity and danger of the Pharisees being 'blind guides.'

What a graphic image. Someone comes along and says, for a few shekels I'll be your guide through Jerusalem. And you say, what's your qualification to be my guide? He says, I'm a blind man.

38:51 - 39:05 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The commandment came and sin revived and I died.

The example of the Pharisees using the 'Corban' tradition to avoid honoring their parents is used to demonstrate their spiritual blindness to the true meaning of God's law.

Why, their blindness was manifested in this setting in two very predominant ways. First of all, they didn't have a clue of the true meaning of the law of God. They were able to take God's commandment, Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother, and so trifle with them, that they could walk by the home of an indigent, starving, destitute mother or father on their way to the temple and take the money they should have used to care for that mother or father and give it to God, if they did indeed give it, call it Corban, dedicate it to God, come back to pay a visit to Mom and Dad and say, Sorry, th...

41:04 - 42:32 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The commandment came and sin revived and I died.

Paul's testimony in Romans 7, where he realized the depth of his sin through the tenth commandment, illustrates how God's law reveals the heart's true condition.

That that law touches the very springs of desire. That law touches attitudes and motives and thoughts and intentions of the heart. Just read the last half of Matthew chapter 5 when Jesus strips away all of the pharisaic scribal crust around the law and says, You have heard that it was said, that is, by the scribes and the pharisees, but I say unto you, Here is the true meaning of the law. And if you are a planting of God somewhere along the line in differing ways and with differing intensity, God gives to every one of His plantings not only the knowledge that their basic problem is a heart pro...

42:32 - 44:00 Read in full sermon

The point: Examine if you have truly seen your own heart as the ugliest, vilest thing, understanding that your deepest problem is a heart problem.

A quote from Dr. A.W. Tozer, 'I've seen a lot of ugly things in my life but the ugliest, vilest thing I've ever seen is my own heart,' is used to emphasize the profound realization of one's own sinfulness.

These plantings that were not planted by the Father that were to be rooted up, there was nothing about them that defied expectations or explanation but that the Father had made them His plant. Everything in their religion was acquired by tradition, by dint of personal effort, by dint of personal discipline, but they were utterly ignorant that their hearts were a sink hole of the foulest sin. What about you? You'll never forget an old Dr. Tozer before he died saying, I've seen a lot of ugly things in my life but the ugliest, vilest thing I've ever seen is my own heart. And you say that? You dea...

53:45 - 55:13 Read in full sermon