What Are Its Grounds? (2)

In this part of the sermon: Martin opens with an analogy of a fire alarm, emphasizing the need for accurate, loud, and clear directions in danger. He then applies this to humanity's critically dangerous…

An analogy of a false fire alarm and the need for accurate, loud, and clear evacuation directions is used to emphasize the critical importance of God's clear directions for escaping spiritual danger (wrath).

The following sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, August 6, 2006, at Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Last Lord's Day morning, as we were in the midst of our season of corporate intercessory prayer, commonly identified as the pastoral prayer, the fire alarm began to clang. Thankfully, it was a false alarm, precipitated by a two-year-old hanging on the shoulder of his mother, who, when she bowed her head to enter into that prayer in the nursery or in the hallway,

0:02 - 0:46 Read in full sermon

Driving home: God's gracious, powerful work in us has nothing more to do with the ground of our justification than our stinking, rotten, filthy, rag works have to do with the ground of our justification.

Martin quotes James Buchanan, who describes the error of making justification rest on the Spirit's work in us as a 'subtle or plausible error' and a 'singularly refined form of opposition' to imputed righteousness, highlighting its danger.

Now, this is not just a verbal distinction. Some fine line of theology. James Buchanan, in what is the classic work on this doctrine, states the issue this way. There is perhaps no more subtle or plausible error on the subject of justification than that which makes it rest on the indwelling presence of the gracious work of the Spirit, in the heart.

13:35 - 14:05 Read in full sermon

Driving home: All the glorious things he is doing in us and shall yet do in us when we are like him, when we see him as he is, do not enter one ten-millionth of a gram into the ground on which God pardons all our sins and accepts and …

The distinction between God declaring something true about us in the 'courtroom' (justification) and God doing something in us in the 'operating room' (sanctification/new birth) clarifies that internal work is distinct from the ground of justification.

Number one, the fundamental and biblical assumption in the words, not for anything wrought in us. What's the assumption behind the use of those words? Well the assumption is that in every judgment, every justified person, God is doing something in them. He's not only declaring something to be true about them in the court of heaven, that's the courtroom.

17:55 - 18:23 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Outside of myself and in Christ, I am not a sinner. Myself and in Christ, I am not a sinner. Outside of Christ and in myself, I am yet a sinner.

Martin quotes Martin Luther's paradoxical statement, 'Outside of myself and in Christ, I am not a sinner. Outside of Christ and in myself, I am yet a sinner,' to illustrate the dual reality of a believer's justified status in Christ versus their ongoing struggle with indwelling sin.

This gets your nose out of your own navel, groveling in dispirited, discouraged, morose, dark spiritual experience and enables you to say with Luther, and this is what I trust God will drive home to your heart as I come to my final application, first to the saint and then to the sinner. Luther loved to state things in paradox. And he had to do it for his own soul. You know how he as an Augustinian monk struggled with the sense of his guilt and all of his pilgrimages and his fastings and almost killing himself with asceticism when the truth dawned upon him.

50:56 - 51:41 Read in full sermon

The point: Let this truth grip you and liberate you to be free to serve others, from the junk and tawdry trinkets of this world, and enable your heart to soar in selfless abandonment to serve others.

The metaphor of hiding 'under His robes' when the Father looks upon Christ's perfect righteousness illustrates how believers are accepted as righteous in God's sight through union with Christ.

For He is the Lord, my righteousness. And what He is, in the judgment, or the court of heaven, I am in Him. I hide under His robes. And when the Father looks upon Him and says, Oh, my perfectly righteous Son, never once did You deviate from my law in thought, in word, in attitude, in motion of mind and heart, or deed.

54:07 - 54:34 Read in full sermon

The point: Learn to live the way you first came to Christ, resting solely on Christ and Christ alone, not weaving your performance into the fabric of your confidence of acceptance.

Martin quotes lines from the hymn 'Just As I Am' to remind believers of the disposition of self-abandonment and sole reliance on Christ's blood with which they first came to faith, urging them to maintain this posture.

You said from the heart, though not necessarily with these words, this was your disposition, nothing, nothing in my hands I bring simply to thy cross I cling foul. Foul I to the fountain fly. I don't get cleaned up and then come to the fountain. No, I go to the fountain foul.

56:14 - 56:35 Read in full sermon