Essential Elements

Pastor Martin sets up an extended teaching illustration. A man comes to the table famished, all his favorite foods set before him — steak, baked Idaho potato, peas. But he wears strange tinted glasses that distort everything. He sees mud on his plate, a hunk of dry wood for a potato, and pebbles for peas. He shouts, 'Take that garbage away!'

I'm using the illustration as an organizing principle in order to give us something on which to hang the various aspects of the biblical testimony. Now the illustration is this. We are in the presence of a man who has not eaten for an entire day. He's been working hard. He's a healthy man. There's nothing wrong with his stomach, nothing wrong with his general gastrointestinal system.

15:01 - 15:27 Read in full sermon

Driving home: There was no change in the faculty of his appetite, his ability to assimilate, masticate food. But what has happened? A threefold transformation.

When someone removes the glasses and brings back the same plate, the man's eyes widen. He starts to salivate. He apologizes for his manners and digs in. Same food, same hunger, same faculties — but now he sees what was always there. So regeneration removes the distorting glasses and reveals reality.

And we bring back the same plate and we say, now, sir, here's your meal. And now he looks and his eyes get wide. And he starts to salivate. And before long he says, forgive my manners! Now, what's happened? Well, you see, the platter of food set before him has experienced absolutely no change. It was steak. It was potatoes.

19:07 - 19:36 Read in full sermon

Driving home: You calling it garbage doesn't change what it is.

Pastor Martin shows that the natural man hears the gospel — Christ glorious, His blood precious, His salvation eternal — and shouts, 'Take that garbage away!' Not because the gospel is garbage, but because his glasses make him see it that way.

Not for me. Man, I'm going to live. That stuff will poison you. Give up your life to Christ. Trust in him. Live for the world to come. Foolishness. Take the garbage away. But remember, that man with his funny glasses calling Tim's meal garbage didn't make it garbage.

23:34 - 23:59 Read in full sermon

Pastor Martin quotes Wesley: 'Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature's night. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke, the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off. My heart was free.' The whole conversion began when the eye diffused a quickening ray.

Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature's night. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke, the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off. My heart was free. I rose, went forth.

33:37 - 34:05 Read in full sermon

Driving home: None that seeketh after God. To me, these are some of the saddest words in all of the Bible.

Imagine a parent whose child looks at them with no recognition, no desire to commune, no delight in their presence. Pastor Martin uses this image for the heartbreaking words 'none seeketh after God' — humanity made to know God treats Him as a stranger.

its mother or father. Showed no evidence of desire to commune with that mother or father. Found no delight in the presence of that mother and father. Can you imagine the pain, the pain of the heart of those parents? May I speak reverently, can you imagine the pain in the heart of God? Of all the the sons and daughters of Adam, not one that natively seeks him and finds delight in him. It ought to make us weep. Do you feel something of the tragedy of that? Are you so dull and insensitive and bound by your sins that you just see soon that this raving maniac be quiet? Do you feel the horror

37:00 - 37:54 Read in full sermon

The point: Don't expect God to obey through you mystically — He has so worked that you yourself volitionally choose His ordinances.

Pastor Martin: 'Luther was right when he wrote his book, The Bondage of the Will. There is no bondage like the bondage of willing that which is your own destruction.' Sinners are bound — bound by their own willing of what destroys them.

And in that sense, Luther was right when he wrote his book, The Bondage of the Will. And there is no bondage like the bondage of willing that which is your own destruction. But now what happens in regeneration? Ah, there's a rectifying of the will. A turning it in the proper direction so that it acts on the proper objects by a proper rule. Look at the language of Ezekiel 36.

45:16 - 45:44 Read in full sermon

The point: Deal with the God that is, not the God you are dreaming about — submit to His revealed truth.

Pastor Martin recalls Dr. Rudolph telling a young man wrestling with hard providence: 'Son, you better start dealing with the God that is and not the God you're dreaming about.' He uses this to close his charge to those scrutinizing their wattage of illumination instead of believing.

He said, son, you better start dealing with the God that is and not the God you're dreaming about. You better start dealing with the God that is and not the God you're dreaming about. Do you object to this teaching? My friend, that's the teaching of the God who is. You better bow to it and live or fight it and die. Oh, may God write his truth upon our heart.

55:44 - 56:09 Read in full sermon