Our Love Must Be Properly Rooted

Driving home: if the kingdom of god is come to you who has found the hidden treasure and you've sold all that you have christ is of supreme worth to you you see a beauty and a loveliness in christ that makes you say if you have christ…

The parable from Matthew 13:44 is used to illustrate how a true convert, upon discovering Christ, perceives Him as a treasure of such supreme worth that they joyfully sell everything else to possess Him.

that keeps us from embracing the yoke of Christ and either the indifference to our sin or the misplaced confidence in another way of acceptance with God and brings us to see that our only hope is in the righteousness of Christ you see in the true convert the spirit of God does this powerful application or effects this powerful application of saving grace and whenever he does it he causes the sinner to behold a beauty in Christ that makes Christ to him what Christ himself described in the parable of the treasure hidden in the field and in the parable of the pearl of great price you remember our...

16:03 - 17:33 Read in full sermon

Driving home: if the kingdom of god is come to you who has found the hidden treasure and you've sold all that you have christ is of supreme worth to you you see a beauty and a loveliness in christ that makes you say if you have christ…

The parable from Matthew 13:45-46 is used to illustrate how a merchant, upon finding one pearl of supreme worth (Christ), liquidates all other valuable pearls to acquire it, signifying Christ's unrivaled value.

as worthy of being retained as valuable possessions until he found this one treasure hidden in the field and when he found that one treasure his sense of values underwent a radical upheaval everything else that up till that time he had accomplished yet accounted worthy of retention worthy of protection suddenly he released that one treasure hidden in the field likewise verse 45 again the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant seeking goodly pearls and having found one pearl of great price he went and sold all and bought there is a man who is a pearl merchant and he has many po...

17:33 - 18:58 Read in full sermon

Driving home: if the kingdom of god is come to you who has found the hidden treasure and you've sold all that you have christ is of supreme worth to you you see a beauty and a loveliness in christ that makes you say if you have christ…

Martin contrasts the two parables (treasure vs. pearl) to suggest that God's grace can come as a sudden surprise or at the end of a long quest, but the result is always the same: Christ is perceived as the sole treasure.

it's the contrast of the lord may be utterly from the human standpoint utterly indifferent utterly without any previous consciousness of god awakening in him a hunger and a thirst for reality in the things of god and forgiveness of sins he is like someone who stumbles into a field and finds a treasure beneath the bush and the nettles and making sure that no one sees him he furtively goes out strikes his deal and comes back to possess the treasure upon which he stumbled in the second parallel it's the picture of a man on a quest he is a merchant seeking seeking seeking could it be that our lord...

18:58 - 20:21 Read in full sermon

Driving home: if the kingdom of god is come to you who has found the hidden treasure and you've sold all that you have christ is of supreme worth to you you see a beauty and a loveliness in christ that makes you say if you have christ…

The work of God in renewing the will to embrace Christ's yoke is described as a 'spiritual heart transplant' from Ezekiel 36 and Jeremiah 31, signifying a radical internal transformation.

Further, God is in supernatural power. He does that work of marvelous renewal that makes the sinner gladly embrace the yoke of Christ. It's described in Ezekiel 36 and Jeremiah 31 as a spiritual heart transplant. God says, I will take out the heart of stone.

21:44 - 22:07 Read in full sermon

Driving home: if the kingdom of god is come to you who has found the hidden treasure and you've sold all that you have christ is of supreme worth to you you see a beauty and a loveliness in christ that makes you say if you have christ…

The 'yoke of Christ' is explained as either submitting to His commandments or sharing His burden, emphasizing that it is custom-fit and light compared to the burden of sin.

Take my yoke upon you. And the picture is either submitting to the yoke that he holds out, the yoke of his own commandments, as we heard this morning, that are not grievous, that only have the glory of God and the sanctity and the well-being of man as their end. It's either the yoke of his own will that he holds out to us, or his own yoke that he offers to share with us, that we may, as it were, pull and go in the direction of the knowledge of Christ, the ways of Christ, in company with the people of Christ, to advance the kingdom of Christ. But in either case, the animal that comes under the ...

22:37 - 23:46 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Oh, dear young people, I've borne that yoke for forty-one years, but the whole forty-one years is lighter than one day of that other yoke that left me with a condemned conscience and with a frightening cloud of joy.

Martin shares his personal experience of bearing Christ's yoke for 41 years, testifying that it is lighter than even one day under the 'other yoke' of sin, which brought condemnation and bitterness.

It's a lovely little chorus we used to sing as new Christians. His yoke is easy, his burden is light, I found it so, I found it so. He leadeth me by day and by night. His yoke is easy, his burden is light.

24:58 - 25:15 Read in full sermon

Driving home: It is that faith alone which will be the mother of that love which will endure and persevere will maintain its heat and its glow through all the chilling blasts of any of abounding lawlessness. But anything short of that…

The language of faith is described as throwing the 'full weight of the soul' upon Christ, echoing the hymn 'Other refuge have I none, hangs my helpless soul on Thee,' to convey absolute dependence.

Oh no, my friend, there is some clear perception that I am a hell-deserving sinner who has broken the law of a holy God and in the person of the incarnate God, Jesus Christ, one perfectly kept that law and under the curses of that law he was born upon the cross and bore the unleashed fury of the wrath of God until he drank into his soul that cup we contemplated a few months ago in our communion meditation and I see by eyes and by the spirit that in that perfect life and in that immolated God is my only hope of life and salvation and acceptance with God and with the full, may I use the term, wi...

28:28 - 29:51 Read in full sermon

Driving home: It is that faith alone which will be the mother of that love which will endure and persevere will maintain its heat and its glow through all the chilling blasts of any of abounding lawlessness. But anything short of that…

Faith is likened to a man guilty of manslaughter fleeing desperately to a city of refuge with the avenger of blood on his heels, illustrating the urgency and desperation of true belief in Christ for salvation.

to a man who is guilty of manslaughter. He did not deliberately kill a man. He's guilty of not murder but inadvertent manslaughter. The avenger of blood is on his heels and he knows there's a city of refuge some ten days away and though he's fat and out of shape if he can own a city of refuge and he's huffing and puffing and wondering if he's going to have a heart attack and he flees and he's stumbling and the door is shut behind him.

29:51 - 30:23 Read in full sermon

Driving home: It is that faith alone which will be the mother of that love which will endure and persevere will maintain its heat and its glow through all the chilling blasts of any of abounding lawlessness. But anything short of that…

An extended quotation from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, describing a fire burning against a wall, constantly doused with water by the devil but secretly fed with oil by Christ, illustrates how grace is maintained in the believer's heart despite temptation.

of any of abounding lawlessness. But anything short of that won't do it. Remember in the parable of the sower Jesus said Luke 8 These that are sown upon the rocky soil are those who for a while believe the word comes is used who for a season believe believe in a cosmos of testing and that lawlessness causes their professed faith and its accompaniment of love to wither and to die. You see Bunyan understood this and in his own inimitable way captured it in so many ways in his immortal Pilgrim's Progress. Remember that incident in the house of interpreter? Then I saw in my dream the interpreter t...

32:44 - 34:05 Read in full sermon