Lean Not on Your Own Understanding

The point: Learn to repudiate all resting upon unaided humanism and reason as the basis of governing your lives if you desire God to direct your paths.

Compares leaning on one's understanding to a cripple leaning on chains or a drunk on a lamppost, illustrating reliance for support.

It means to lean upon something so as to be supported by it. As a cripple leans upon his chains, and as a drunk leans upon a lamppost. So he says, lean not. Do not make the place of your support and your resting to be your own understanding.

7:24 - 7:48 Read in full sermon

The point: Learn to repudiate all resting upon unaided humanism and reason as the basis of governing your lives if you desire God to direct your paths.

Uses Samson's request to lean on the pillars in Judges 16:26 to vividly portray the physical act of leaning for support, connecting it to the spiritual meaning of the text.

It's interesting that it's this precise word in the Hebrew that is found in the account of... Amazing.

7:48 - 8:00 Read in full sermon

Driving home: And in the place of the mind and its sound judgments, you know what is offered in this philosophy? The vicious tyranny of being driven by impulses, urges, whims, and subjective inclinations.

Compares Christians trying to read God's will in providential circumstances without using their minds to a fortune teller reading tea leaves, highlighting the futility of such an approach.

The scripture says, the commands of God are not grievous, but when people forsake a Christian experience in which they are led by the rational dictates of a mind illumined by the Word, for something, quote, more spiritual, they enter into the vicious tyranny, the driving whiplash of impulses, urges, whims, and inclinations. In the place of a calm, rational response to the Word of God written in seeking to know the will of God, there is the almost occult attempt at reading providential circumstances, and you have Christians treating providential circumstances

11:26 - 12:09 Read in full sermon

Driving home: And in the place of the mind and its sound judgments, you know what is offered in this philosophy? The vicious tyranny of being driven by impulses, urges, whims, and subjective inclinations.

Recounts a contemporary author's suggestion to 'shoot that computer... called the brain... to the moon' to make spiritual progress, illustrating a hyper-spiritual view that rejects the mind.

Let me give two current expressions of it. One man has recently written, in a book, suggesting how the church may come back to apostolic power. He's written saying words, something like this. This is not an exact quote, but it's close enough to say this is what he said.

12:42 - 12:59 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin clarifies that 'lean not on your own understanding' is not a call to abandon the use of the mind in general, nor to discard good, sanctified common sense in matters of…

Describes a leader in a 'moving of the spirit' who told Christians to empty their minds of theology, creating 'darkness upon the face of the deep' for the Spirit to brood, illustrating a gross expression of anti-intellectualism.

You see what he's saying? He's saying a mind that is working is the enemy of spiritual progress in reality. Another expression of it, in the midst of what was supposed to be a great moving of the spirit of God in another continent, went something like this. The leader said, when he gathered the Christians together, now you know what the problem with your Christians is?

13:22 - 13:43 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The second positive meaning is a call to recognize the inadequacies and limitations of the human mind in its fallen state. Sin has darkened, depraved, and made the mind hostile to…

Compares total depravity to one drop of poison pervading a whole glass of water, illustrating how sin affects every faculty of man, including the mind.

And his mind was affected. When we speak of the doctrine of total depravity we do not mean nor have theologians ever meant to say that the Bible teaches man is as depraved extensively or intensively as he could be. What we are simply saying is that as one drop of poison pervades the whole glass of water and makes it wholly poisoned so the entrance to the Bible the entrance of sin pervaded every faculty of man's being so that sin comes to light in the functionings of the mind. So what does the Bible say about man's mind

29:55 - 30:39 Read in full sermon

The point: If you are not getting answers to your problems, consider if you are leaning upon your own understanding instead of crying to God for light.

Explains why he begins counseling sessions with prayer, acknowledging God's knowledge and seeking His light, illustrating the practical application of not leaning on one's own understanding.

upon thine own understanding many of you who've had occasion to counsel with me in my own study will often wonder or maybe you have wondered you shouldn't say you do but perhaps you have why is it that when one has had the privilege of dealing with God's people in their many problems for many years but before we ever talk about your problem we bow in the presence of God and we acknowledge and say Lord you know the heart of the one who's come you know the need you know the portions of your truth which apply to that need now Lord we throw ourselves upon your mercy we call on you we cry to you fo...

50:32 - 51:16 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not lean upon human counsel or worldly strategies to escape spiritual problems or advance the church; this will lead to shame and spiritual bondage.

Critiques the Key 73 evangelistic project, highlighting its ecumenical leadership (Salvation Army, liberal clergyman, Roman Catholic Monsignor) as an example of leaning on human counsel and organization rather than God's ways, predicting its failure.

in the Christian church today when there is barrenness and lack of evangelistic fervor and passion and increase and we have all the experts telling us how to strike a deal with Egypt instead of falling upon our faces and turning to the word and saying Lord what's the answer to our need God's word is Israel shall be ashamed of his own my heart has been caused to bleed and I don't take delight in doing this recently received the latest literature on this key 73 project and here was the big blurb from the New York greater New York

60:55 - 61:39 Read in full sermon