Four Fold Pattern (#4): The Lord Jesus Christ

The point: Receive Christ's example as a binding obligation, not as inspirational suggestion - Peter and John use the language of moral debt.

Pastor Martin recounts John 13 in detail - Christ rising from supper, laying aside His garments, taking a towel, kneeling to wash and dry His disciples' feet. The most practical possible self-conscious patterning.

knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he came forth from God, and goeth unto God, riseth from supper, and laying aside his garments, he took a towel and girded himself. And then we read the account of how he took the place of a common servant and washed the feet of the disciples. Now the significant thing is this. John underscores that at this point, Our Lord was self-consciously aware of who He was, that He came forth from God and was going unto God. It was not that He had any misunderstanding about the dignity of His own identity, but fully conscious of it, He...

14:41 - 15:31 Read in full sermon

Peter uses a unique Greek word picturing a writing pattern - children tracing letters on a copybook. Christ has left such a pattern in His patient suffering for us to trace.

Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow his steps. And Peter uses a very graphic word. It's the only time it occurs in the New Testament. And I believe Mr. Garlington referred to it some months ago when he spoke, or at least made allusion to this passage. Christ has left us a pattern. We would say a tracing pattern.

18:16 - 18:42 Read in full sermon

Driving home: He has revealed God not in abstraction, not in philosophical terms, but in the concreteness of this life.

Pastor Martin admits he is reduced almost to silence by the holiness of the subject - 'if I could, I'd close my Bible and be silent.' He prays for help to touch holy things rightly.

of struggling even to find words to make decent sentences. And I'm not quite sure of the cause of all of that, but I must in honesty confess it, that if I could, I'd close my Bible and go home right now. That there is a heaviness upon my own spirit and a lack of sense of utterance in my preaching, and I'm very conscious of it. And God knows the cause. My own conscience is clear before God.

26:41 - 27:07 Read in full sermon

The point: Pray for a burning hatred for whatever profanes the temple of your own heart - the same zeal Christ showed in the temple.

He pictures the Lord cleansing the temple with a scourge of cords held in a holy hand, asking God to give him a similar burning hatred for everything that profanes the temple of his own heart.

Well, when I open my Bible to those passages where I see the Lord Jesus going into the temple and there taking a scourge of cords and holding it in a hand attached to an arm that was snarled with the years of labor in Joseph's carpenter shop. And I see him with burning eye going through that temple and literally throwing over the tables of the money changers and driving out the oxen and those that traded and had turned that place into a commercial prostitution of worship. I understand what it means. Our God is a consuming fire. And I'm called upon to be like him.

33:30 - 34:17 Read in full sermon

The point: Study how Christ dealt with His disciples as the living exposition of 1 Corinthians 13 - patient, kind, not provoked.

The Lord coming to the brow of Jerusalem and weeping over the city under His own anathema - the holy and tender heart Pastor Martin asks God to reproduce in him.

When he comes to the brow of Jerusalem, that city upon which he has pronounced the curse and the anathema of God. And yet it says, when he beheld the city, he wept over it. And as we behold a sobbing Christ looking over the brow of a city which is under the judgment of God. we understand something of what it means that God is love. When we hear him say, as the good shepherd, I lay down my life for the sheep, no one takes it from me. When we see him in his patience with his disciples, when all the while during the earthly pilgrimage with them, they were so stupid and so blundering and so blind,...

35:41 - 36:24 Read in full sermon

The point: Stop conjuring up an imaginary Christ who agrees with your inclinations - submit to the Christ of Scripture in His fullness.

Pastor Martin describes counseling people who say 'I just feel Jesus would handle it this way.' He pulls Scripture and they admit, 'Oh, I never thought of that.' They were conforming Christ to themselves rather than themselves to Christ.

You see, there is a dangerous form of idolatry of which Christians are often guilty. And it's this. They conjure up in their own minds how they think Christ would act and react in a given situation. They say, well, I can't imagine the Lord doing that, therefore I'll not do that. Or I can't imagine the Lord doing this or not doing that. And how often have I heard people say, well, I just can't believe Christ would do that.

45:16 - 45:40 Read in full sermon

He closes with Watts's hymn: 'My dear Redeemer and my Lord, I read my duty in Thy Word; but in Thy light the law appears, drawn out in living characters' - the perfect distillation of the message.

I trust we will sing it with renewed understanding this morning. My dear Redeemer and my Lord, I read my duty in Thy Word, but in Thy light the law appears drawn out in living characters. Such was Thy truth and Thy zeal, such deference to Thy Father's will, such love and meekness so divine, I would transcribe

49:46 - 50:13 Read in full sermon