The Nature of God in Himself

The point: Gird up the loins of your mind and listen to this study on justification as if your life depended on hearing the only cure for a deadly disease.

Martin compares the urgency of understanding justification to a person afflicted with a deadly disease hearing about its only cure. This highlights the life-or-death importance of the sermon's topic.

And your sins and my sins deserve everlasting fasting conscious suffering in hell and if god should mark them and give us what we deserve that would be our portion and therefore to engage in this study that is going to demand that we think and we wrestle with biblical texts it is not an abstract philosophical discussion of some religious idea nor is it an interesting philological discussion that is some people have an interest in words and in old text and they become philologists and they like to study words and the meaning of words no this is not a fascination with ancient text and with obscu...

7:43 - 9:06 Read in full sermon

The point: Be firmly rooted in the doctrine of justification by understanding its supporting doctrines, to avoid instability and vulnerability to error.

A scientist studying a human nose in isolation, without seeing its context on the face, is used to illustrate that biblical truths like justification cannot be understood apart from their interconnectedness with other doctrines, especially the nature of God.

of the doctrine of justification first of all i want you to consider with me why it is important to start our study here why is it important to start our study considering the biblical context of the doctrine of justification and my answer is that justification is like all of the other major troops of the bible in that it cannot be understood apart from the other jews to which it is intimately you can't janet lee and structurallyцу or the yields create what i mean isn't that what it was too long scientist do you want to know us do moon case it has been because he is always paying attention in ...

10:27 - 11:43 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Drawing from Exodus 15 and Isaiah 6, Martin demonstrates God's glorious and shattering holiness, which causes sinful man to cry 'Woe is me.' He emphasizes God as the 'Holy One of…

Martin uses the phrase 'cuddly bear God' to represent a false, softened, and non-threatening conception of God that fails to acknowledge His holiness and wrath, thereby undermining the need for justification.

And one cried to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord, Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. And at this outshining of the burning, majestic holiness of God, the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of Him that cried, the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Oh, happy, happy, happy am I, for I've seen the cuddly bear God.

21:11 - 21:42 Read in full sermon

The point: Recognize God's 'pincer move' of holiness and justice pressing in upon you, cutting off complacency and driving you to a sense of need for Christ.

This metaphor describes a benign, indulgent, and non-punishing view of God, which Martin argues is often promoted in modern worship and prevents sinners from recognizing their true need for Christ.

By way of application, again, I assert the gospel will not be good news as long as we conceive of God as a nearsighted, rather benign, indulgent grandfather figure who may occasionally wag his finger at his brattish grandchildren, but they know he'd never lay a hand on them.

41:28 - 41:51 Read in full sermon

The point: Recognize God's 'pincer move' of holiness and justice pressing in upon you, cutting off complacency and driving you to a sense of need for Christ.

A military 'pincer move' is used to illustrate how God's holiness and justice press in on careless sinners from two sides, cutting off their complacency and driving them to a sense of their desperate need for Christ.

In a real sense, the recognition of God's holiness and justice become, to the careless sinner, God's pincer move to shut them up to the sense of their need of Christ. You know what a pincer's move is in the military? There's the enemy. His supply lines are here.

42:28 - 42:47 Read in full sermon

The point: If you have a sense of who God is and know you're not ready to meet Him, throw yourself upon Jesus as your only hope.

Martin quotes a hymn that beautifully expresses the dilemma of sinful humanity facing an infinitely holy God, and the resolution found in Christ's sacrifice and advocacy, reinforcing the sermon's central theme.

no until we're driven back before the rays of his holiness we'll never know what it is to draw near through the blood of the cross of Christ may God grant that these supportive truths of the glorious doctrine of justification will be born afresh in all of our hearts some of this is wonderfully captured in Christian hymnody of the past in closing I quote but one such hymn that is one of my favorites the hymn writer exclaims eternal light eternal light how pure that soul must be which placed within your burning light it shrinks not but with calm delight can live and look on thee the spirits that...

55:01 - 56:30 Read in full sermon