Importance

Pastor Martin opens with the extended image of a drunk who exceeds speed limits, hits a brick building, and ends up with a fractured skull, lacerated face, and a vast spectrum of legal and personal problems - illustrating how sin creates a complex set of needs requiring multiple kinds of help.

just as the man who goes out and gets himself drunk and then has the audacity to get into his car and attempt to drive it, and in that attempt exceeds the speed limits, wanders over the center line, eventually jumps a curb, hits a pedestrian, breaks off a fire plug,

1:24 - 1:46 Read in full sermon

The drunk driver needs a physician for his wounds and a lawyer for the courtroom; sinners need many kinds of help - and Christ is so constituted that He alone meets every dimension of that need.

You see, the man who did what was described needs a physician to take care of his lacerated face and his fractured skull. He needs a lawyer to represent him in a court of law when charges are brought against him. He needs a claims adjuster to take care of insurance matters. You see, the complexity of his legal and personal problems demands a complexity of resolution to those problems.

3:16 - 3:43 Read in full sermon

Whether light is particles or waves matters little to a reader; what matters is that it works. So with justification - we may not grasp every theological nuance, but we must walk in its reality.

the end of that debate or the resolution of that debate really is of little or no consequence. As long as I've got light bouncing off the page and reflecting into my eyeball so I can read, whether it's particles or waves, I could care less. Frankly, it doesn't trouble me one-tenth of one second all the while I'm preaching whether or not the light that helps me see my Bible and my notes is particles or waves. And I hope it doesn't bother you as you sit there listening.

8:28 - 8:56 Read in full sermon

He pictures himself standing under a ten-ton slab of steel hung by flimsy ropes that are breaking strand by strand - a fool would stand cocksure underneath. So is the unjustified sinner under God's wrath.

with a ten-ton slab of steel hung above my head with a few flimsy ropes, and I could hear the strands of those ropes breaking one by one, I'd be a fool to stand here, cocksure and unmoved by the reality of that which hangs over my head. You begin to take the real situation, my friend, that you are indeed a sinner, under the crushing weight of divine anger, it will fill you with dread and horror if this truth is not real. And what about the future? I say any realistic anticipation of the future can only produce despair and hopelessness because the future holds for certain that I shall stand bef...

10:52 - 11:48 Read in full sermon

Like a miser fondling and polishing his coins, drinking in delight from their glitter, the believer should fondle and polish the truths of justification, drinking in delight from their splendor.

And then he fondles them, and then he polishes them, and then he looks at them, and his poor, distorted, miserly soul drinks in an almost hellish delight from the glitter of the light upon his coins. But my friend, we ought to be like him in a totally different realm. We ought, when we look at the various coins of divine provision in Christ, never do so with indifference, never do so with reluctance, But take down the coin of justification and look at it in all of its various lights and, as it were, polish it with fresh and intense reflection and meditation and let our souls drink in the wonde...

15:23 - 16:12 Read in full sermon

The point: Church members should beat a path to the elders demanding justification be sounded from the pulpit if it goes silent - the doctrine must remain central.

Centuries of darkness under Rome's ritualism were broken when God raised Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, and Farrell to recover the doctrine of justification - the watershed of church history.

The Protestant Reformation, as the watershed of church history, is proof of this. For centuries, though there were pockets of believers who broke through all the ritual of Rome and all of the anti-biblical thinking of that imposing church-state structure, by and large the masses were besotted in the deepest kind of ignorance.

35:08 - 35:33 Read in full sermon

The point: If you lack zeal, holy joy, and sacrificial service, ask whether the absence of a clear grasp on justification is the root cause.

Man's way is 'be good and I'll give you a cookie.' God's way is to confer mercy for nothing in us, then get us so taken up with the wonder of free grace that holy obedience flows out.

That's man's way. God's way is, I give you your cookie, now be good. You see, God's way is to confer the mercy for nothing in us and to get us so taken up with the wonder of what is given that our zeal to serve Him far outstrips the zeal of hoping to get something for what we do. Isn't that the pattern of the Bible? I beseech you, by the mercies of God, mercies already given, present your body a living sacrifice. That's the divine pattern. And that's what makes the gospel so offensive to those who don't understand it. The Roman Catholic Church in its official pronouncements, which, by the way,...

40:51 - 41:42 Read in full sermon