The Needs that Only Christ Can Meet

The point: Be grateful for messages that are personally liberating, comforting, and instructive in working with children and witnessing to the unconverted.

The imagery of a 'canopy' is used to describe overarching qualifications and cautions for understanding the essential elements of conversion, suggesting a protective and comprehensive framework.

Last week, in preparation for taking up our second major heading, moving from the necessity of conversion or for conversion to the essential elements of conversion, I set before you what I described as an all-embracing canopy of qualification and cautions in considering the essential elements of conversion. Under that imagery of a canopy that stretches over everything that will be subsumed under the heading of the essential elements of conversion, I sought to demonstrate by setting before you five cameo accounts of conversion in the Scriptures these four words of caution. Genuine conversions n...

3:00 - 4:09 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The first essential element of genuine conversion is stated and explained: being brought to an acute, severe, and sharp sense of spiritual need that can only be met in the person…

Examples of 'acute appendicitis' and 'acute tendonitis' are used to explain the meaning of 'acute' as severe, sharp, and impossible to ignore, applying it to the spiritual sense of need.

spiritual need. Now what does the word acute mean? When something is acute, it is severe or sharp. You have a relative rushed to the hospital with acute appendicitis. That is, they have not only an inflamed appendix, but it's right at the point where it's ready to burst and to spill out its poison into the whole abdominal cavity and possibly threaten their life.

9:06 - 9:36 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The first essential element of genuine conversion is stated and explained: being brought to an acute, severe, and sharp sense of spiritual need that can only be met in the person…

The examples of sensing someone else in a room or sensing danger are used to define 'sense' as a felt awareness of the soul, making the concept of 'acute sense of spiritual need' more tangible.

And what do I mean by that? What do I mean by the word sense? Well, the word sense is the use, is word used when we describe a felt awareness of the soul. A felt awareness of the soul. I walked into the room and I sensed that someone else was in the room. I sensed danger.

10:05 - 10:24 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The first essential element of genuine conversion is stated and explained: being brought to an acute, severe, and sharp sense of spiritual need that can only be met in the person…

A wife telling her husband she 'sensed' his coldness is used to illustrate a felt awareness of the soul, emphasizing that this awareness is internal and profound.

A wife may say to her husband, hubby, when you came through the door today, I sensed that you were cold to me. What's she saying? She's saying I had a felt awareness of something in my soul. In my soul or in my spirit. And in genuine conversion, we are brought to an acute sense, a felt awareness of the soul that is not surface, is not incidental, but is severe. It's sharp. It's focused. We cannot ignore it any more than a person with acute appendicitis can ignore it.

10:24 - 11:04 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin presents a second, broader and legitimate focus for this acute sense of spiritual need: any of a variety of unmet needs of the soul. He explains that man's alienation from…

The metaphor of a 'God-shaped hole in his soul' is used to describe man's inherent spiritual emptiness and the fact that only God can satisfy his deepest capacities and appetites.

Man in his state of sin is not only guilty, polluted, and helpless, he is also living with all the results in his soul of his alienation from and rebellion against God. He's got what many have called a God-shaped hole in his soul, left by a vacated God. And only God can fill it. Though he tries to fill it with a thousand things, nothing will fit it.

36:26 - 36:57 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin presents a second, broader and legitimate focus for this acute sense of spiritual need: any of a variety of unmet needs of the soul. He explains that man's alienation from…

Life is compared to an 'insufferably heavy burden strapped upon a poor slave who is given inadequate diet and works 16 hours a day' to illustrate the crushing weariness of the soul that drives some to Christ.

It is with thenon memories. some men to an acute sense of spiritual need which they become convinced can only be met in Jesus Christ he allows them to feel the pressure of the circumstances and the disappointments and the sorrows of life he surrounds them with influences that make life like an insufferably heavy burden strapped upon a poor slave who is given inadequate diet and works 16 hours a day and to these Jesus says in that wonderful gospel invitation of Matthew 11 and verse 28 Matthew 11 and verse 28 come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest come unto m...

43:25 - 44:52 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: He continues illustrating broader unmet needs, including a crippling fear of death (Hebrews 2:14-15), a longing for eternal bliss (Matthew 19:16, the thief on the cross), a dread…

The personal story of children losing their grandfather ('Pop-Pop') is used to illustrate a frightening sense of insecurity in the soul, and how God might use such an event to draw people to Christ.

Pop-Pop always has been there. Pop-Pop's always been there. I can't conceive of life without Pop-Pop. Pop-Pop's been like the rock at Gibraltar.

55:12 - 55:23 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not 'rake over your past' or constantly question how you came to Christ; if you are in the 'banquet house' (Christ), eat and stop scrupling.

The analogy of a starving man in a banquet house refusing to eat because he doesn't know how he got there is used to rebuke those who scruple over the 'right' way of conversion instead of simply embracing Christ.

Dear people of God, don't rake over your past. Some of you are like a starving man in a banquet house with signs all around. If you're in these doors, eat, eat, eat. It's all yours.

63:02 - 63:13 Read in full sermon

The point: Examine your present attachment to Christ in faith, love, and submission to His word as the infallible proof of true conversion.

The story of a man in a foxhole crying out to God for salvation is used to illustrate a 'spurious conversion' where the felt pain is eased, and the person abandons Christ, contrasting it with a genuine conversion where attachment to Christ endures.

Let me illustrate. In spurious conversion, once the felt pain is eased, people want no more to do with Jesus. Here's a man in a foxhole. His body's all around and being blown to pieces.

65:27 - 65:40 Read in full sermon