Judgment of Believers (SS Open Forum)

In this part of the sermon: Martin speculates on how there can be perfect happiness in heaven despite differing levels of blessedness, suggesting it relates to individual capacity for enjoyment. He notes…

This analogy explains how different capacities can lead to perfect happiness at different levels of enjoyment, illustrating how there can be degrees of reward in heaven without envy.

of reward be? I'm not sure. I have some ideas and I have some theories. But we're not here to discuss my ideas and theories. The Bible gives us as far as I know very little information as to how all in heaven can be perfectly happy and yet there be levels of blessedness in the area of reward. But I think the answer lies somewhere in the area of capacity. You can take a six year old. to hear the New York Philharmonic, and he can be blissfully happy, particularly when the timpani go toward the end.

28:59 - 29:38 Read in full sermon

The point: Commit yourselves to God's methods and God's message in building the church, rather than relying on 'new measures' that produce 'wood, hay, and stubble.'

This analogy illustrates the concept of a minister's work being burned while he himself is saved, explaining how 'wood, hay, and stubble' work will be destroyed, but the worker will be preserved through the fire.

Charles? Yes. Well, just as if it were possible for me to take wood, hay, and stubble and build a little dollhouse, all right, and then I spray-paint it with a metallic paint so it looks like it's a nice little metal house, and then I put on, put on an asbestos suit on myself, and then I'm asked to walk through a fire, maybe there's a bunch of leaves, all right, and spend at least two minutes in it. Now, if I come through the other side of that, what's going to happen to my little dollhouse made of wood, hay, and stubble?

44:43 - 45:23 Read in full sermon

The point: Commit yourselves to God's methods and God's message in building the church, rather than relying on 'new measures' that produce 'wood, hay, and stubble.'

Martin quotes or references Dabney's exposition of 1 Corinthians 3, applying it to the use of 'new measures' in evangelism that build with inferior materials, which will not stand the test of judgment.

Well, there are those who seem to be building up the church of Jesus Christ, but they are not building it up with gold, silver, and precious stones. They are building it up with inferior materials, and that will be fully manifested in the day of judgment. Now, I would commend to you, we have in our library, and I don't think, they may be still in print, but certainly we have it in our library, Dabney, the great southern theologian, has a masterful exposition of this particular passage in one of his volumes, Discussions Evangelical, and Theological. And it is a masterful treatment of this, and ...

45:29 - 46:57 Read in full sermon

The point: Live under the constraint of grace, ambitious to please God and desiring to be faithful in much, not content with minimum effort.

This example illustrates that true love for Christ, like a husband's love for his wife, aims for the maximum, not the minimum, and is not driven by fear of punishment but by desire to please.

Do you? How many husbands here can say you're content to say, well, I'm content if I can love my wife half as well as I am capable of doing? Every husband that's content with that, raise your hand. In the presence of your wife, I dare you to do it.

56:44 - 57:01 Read in full sermon