If There Really is a God...? (radio broadcast)

Driving home: I would not insult you by attempting to answer such a question from the shallow little pool of my own mind, nor from the combined shallow pools of the minds of the greatest of men living or dead.

Martin uses the analogy of shallow pools to illustrate the inadequacy of human wisdom to answer profound questions about God and suffering, contrasting it with the depth of divinely inspired Scripture.

I would not insult you by attempting to answer such a question from the shallow little pool of my own mind, nor from the combined shallow pools of the minds of the greatest of men living or dead. Rather, we shall turn to the only source of divinely inspired and infallibly revealed answers to such questions, namely the scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments. Now when we pick up our Bibles and begin to read them with these questions in mind, what answer do we find? At the risk of seeming to appear simplistic, let me suggest that we should first look at the Bible's answer to these perplexin...

1:47 - 2:51 Read in full sermon

Driving home: And there really is no answer for the present situation that we find ourselves in this present age with all of the complexity of the technological age in which we live. We find that man is essentially the same as he was …

The story of Cain murdering Abel is used as an early, vivid example of the immediate and devastating consequences of sin's intrusion into human experience.

It is the result of human sin. For as surely as Genesis 1 and 2 teach us the wonderful account of God's creative activity over which these words were written, behold, all was very good. So in the third chapter of Genesis, we are confronted with the intrusion of this horrible moral reality of man's fall into a state of sin. And that fall brought with it death and sorrow and grief and bloodshed, so much so that the first child born of Adam and Eve became a murderer of the second child born of Adam and Eve. For the scripture gives us the detailed account of how Cain rose up and slew his brother A...

5:04 - 6:04 Read in full sermon

Driving home: And there really is no answer for the present situation that we find ourselves in this present age with all of the complexity of the technological age in which we live. We find that man is essentially the same as he was …

The account of violence filling the earth in Genesis 6 is cited to demonstrate the pervasive and grievous nature of human sin and its impact on God's creation.

We read on in the scriptures until we come to Jesus. Genesis chapter 6, and there we have the account that violence, man's inhumanity to man had so filled the entire earth that it grieved God that he had made man, and God was determined to blot out the entirety of the then existing race with the exception of one man and his family. All of the sins that now plague humanity. All of the injustices.

6:04 - 6:33 Read in full sermon

Driving home: And there really is no answer for the present situation that we find ourselves in this present age with all of the complexity of the technological age in which we live. We find that man is essentially the same as he was …

The curse on the earth, bringing forth thorns and thistles, illustrates how sin impacted even the physical world, making work a toil rather than pure delight.

They are the result of the intrusion of sin into the human race, and with that intrusion of sin, we find God himself declaring that a curse would be placed even upon the earth itself. It would not yield fruit as readily as it did before the intrusion of sin, but it would bring forth thorns and thistles, and man would not now merely work, work being a dimension of delightful worship, but that in the sweat of his brow he would bring forth from a relatively unyielding world. And there really is no answer for the present situation that we find ourselves in this present age with all of the complexi...

7:11 - 8:33 Read in full sermon

Driving home: But according to his promise, we are looking for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

Martin dismisses the common, simplistic image of heaven as 'sitting on a cloud and plunking upon a harp,' emphasizing that the new heavens and new earth will involve noble tasks and active service to God.

certainly not be one of sitting on a cloud and plunking upon a harp, ages without end. For the Scripture tells us that in the new heavens and the new earth we shall follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. And we will be given noble tasks to accomplish in which there will not only be the full realization of all of our redeemed potential as men and women, but there will be the cooperation with our fellow redeemed sinners, and the glory of our eternal inheritance will be that in the undimmed vision of God and of the Lamb, and unclouded and unfractured relationships with our fellow redeemed men an...

14:58 - 16:21 Read in full sermon

The point: Own the reality of your sinfulness and alienation from God.

These metaphors describe the present world as a place of profound suffering, bitterness, and conflict, highlighting the context into which God sends the gospel message.

This present world is not in the condition in which God originally made it. When He made it, behold, all was very good, and that which is brought about the present injustice, the bloodshed, the death, the tears, the crying, the sadness, the pain, it is not that God has brought these things upon us, man has brought these things upon himself by himself. By his rebellion against God, but into this present veil of tears, into this present crucible and cauldron of bitterness and war and hatred and death and rape and pillage, God sends the message of the everlasting gospel, and he calls upon men and...

16:21 - 17:20 Read in full sermon

The point: Recognize that your greatest problem is the sin of your own heart, not external societal issues.

Martin uses the examples of a 'pothead down the street' and a 'junkie shooting heroin' to contrast common perceptions of societal problems with the listener's own personal sin as their greatest problem.

And those things are good and right in their place. But my friend, listen, your greatest problem is not the pothead down the street, the junkie who's shooting heroin into his arm there in the streets of New York. Your greatest problem is the sin of your own heart. And you must come to grips with that problem.

21:30 - 21:52 Read in full sermon

The point: Repent of your self-centeredness, self-righteousness, and trusting in your own merits.

The image of the 'poor, blind beggar recorded in the Gospels' crying for mercy is used to illustrate the posture of humility and desperation required for a sinner to come to Christ.

You must. You must repent of your self-centeredness, of your self-righteousness, of trusting in your own merits and virtue, and you must come as a naked, helpless, guilty sinner and cry like that poor, blind beggar recorded in the Gospels, Son of David, have mercy upon me. And then, seeing your sin as your greatest need and Christ as the only answer, you must, according to the Scripture, repent and believe the Gospel. Then, and only then, will you know what it is to come into personal, intimate fellowship with the living God and deal with the cosmos of your own individual world of sin. And the...

23:19 - 24:34 Read in full sermon