A Man Before God

Driving home: The scriptures everywhere assume and assert that true preaching is found where there is no disjunction between the character of the man proclaiming and the content of the message proclaimed.

The condemnation of the Pharisees and scribes for saying but not doing illustrates the disjunction between proclaimed message and lived character, highlighting the danger of professional ministry without personal integrity.

I want to repeat that statement because it's fundamental to the whole direction and drift of what will be said from this platform during these four weeks. The scriptures everywhere assume and assert that true preaching is found where there is no disjunction between the character of the man proclaiming and the content of the message proclaimed. It is the Pharisee and the scribe who are condemned for saying but not doing. It is the Pharisee and the scribe who are condemned for saying but not doing.

5:00 - 5:39 Read in full sermon

Driving home: He must have an expanding, varied, and original acquaintance with God if he is to be an effective preacher.

Martin's personal story of writing love letters to his wife over two decades illustrates how a relationship, like one's walk with God, should be dynamic and expanding, with later expressions of affection reflecting deeper intimacy than earlier ones.

because into them will be pumped the freshness of his own expanding walk with his own God. I like to see a parallel in relationship to love letters. I courted by mail for some four years prior to marrying my wife almost twenty years ago and as I look back, and we did this last summer, it was most amusing to look back at some of my letters written back in the early 1950s. My wife, kid, she says they weren't love letters, they were sermons.

14:35 - 15:15 Read in full sermon

The point: Be a man of prayer yourself, and study God's word diligently for your own edification, allowing it to become more to you than necessary food.

The analogy of a man smelling like lilies after spending time in a greenhouse illustrates that a preacher's expanding and varied walk with God will naturally permeate his preaching without conscious effort.

Be a man of prayer yourself and then the congregation will feel as you open your lips to lead their devotions that you're entering an accustomed presence and speaking to a well-known friend. There are arts of study by which the contents of the Bible can be made available for the edification of others, but this is the best rule. Study God's word diligently for your own edification and when it has become more to you than your necessary food and sweeter than honey or the honeycomb, it will be impossible for you to speak of it to others without a glow passing into your words which will betray the ...

31:24 - 32:41 Read in full sermon

The point: Trust God to lead you through every experience necessary to furnish you and make you an able minister of the new covenant, embracing the originality of your walk with Him.

A.W. Tozer's sermon on Jehovah's way in the sea, comparing walking with God to crossing an ocean, illustrates the unique and original nature of each individual's journey with God.

I read it in one of his essays where he took the text in the Psalms speaking of Jehovah whose way is in the sea, whose paths are not known. And he was making the point that as many ships as have plied the Atlantic not one has left a path for the next one to follow. And he said walking with God is like crossing an ocean in a ship. There's that sense that every man must walk alone.

34:21 - 34:49 Read in full sermon

The point: Cultivate an expanding, varied, and original walk with God through the discipline of consistent, systematic, prayerful, and meditative reading of the Holy Scriptures.

The analogy of physical health being determined by daily diet, not occasional banquets or fasts, illustrates that spiritual health and an expanding walk with God depend on consistent, systematic intake of Scripture, not just crisis-driven prayer.

Your physical health, for the most part, is determined by the day-by-day diet which represents your intake of vitamins, minerals, calories, et cetera, and your health is not a reflection primarily of the abnormal assimilation or non-assimilation of food. By that I mean, if you have a banquet once a month and fast one day a month, the banqueting one day and the fasting the second day will not reflect your basic physical condition. It is the assimilation of food in your normal diet over the other 28 days that primarily determines your physical condition. Well, this is true spiritually. It is not...

36:24 - 37:31 Read in full sermon

The point: Maintain the habit and spirit of secret prayer, recognizing it as a divine obligation to be fulfilled regardless of your present frame of mind.

The story of Mr. Philbrook getting a speeding ticket despite enjoying the sunset illustrates that obligations, like prayer, are binding regardless of one's feelings or frame of mind.

And obligations are to be fulfilled regardless of the present frame of the mind. For instance, driving down here today, Mr. Philbrook saw that the speed limit was 55 miles an hour and he was obviously driving in such a way as to evidence a regard for the ought-ness of those signs which say 55 miles per hour. Had he felt so giddy in his spirit and so confident of his new van and the ability of radial tires to take much higher speeds and his little V8 to propel the vehicle at much higher speeds and he was so irresponsibly wrapped up with the beauty of the sunset that he simply forgot and the sen...

49:32 - 50:58 Read in full sermon