Promise of Fulfilled Needs

Driving home: Holiness and true human self-interest at every level are never at odds with one another. They are constantly fused together.

The devil convinced Adam and Eve that obeying God was not in their best self-interest, illustrating how Satan twists God's commands to make them seem detrimental.

devil, a lie that was spawned upon our first parents, is to get us to think that true self-interest and the path of holiness and obedience, are opposed to one another. Isn't this what the devil sought to bring into the mind of Adam and Eve? What did God say? God said, of all the trees you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou mayest not eat, for in the day that you eat you'll die. What is God

12:15 - 12:46 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: He interprets 'barns filled with plenty' and 'vats overflowing with new wine' as God's promise to meet all basic material needs, not for hoarding but for use and distribution. He…

Martin asks if anyone owns a barn or wine vat to highlight the need to interpret the ancient text for a modern audience, moving from literal meaning to spiritual application.

Anyone here own a barn?

18:21 - 18:22 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: He interprets 'barns filled with plenty' and 'vats overflowing with new wine' as God's promise to meet all basic material needs, not for hoarding but for use and distribution. He…

Examples of Joseph building granaries and the parable of the rich fool are used to illustrate the historical context and meaning of 'barns filled with plenty'.

When Joseph was elevated to that place of importance and given great wisdom from God in terms of the coming of the famine, what did he do? He built great granaries. And it was that great accumulation of grain which was the means by which God spared many during that famine. You remember the story in Luke 12, the parable of the man who had great increase and said, I'll pull down my barns and build greater barns.

20:22 - 20:50 Read in full sermon

The point: Use filled barns (material provision) not for hoarding, but for supplying your own needs and giving to the poor and needy.

The story of the widow whose meal and oil never ran out during famine is used to show that God fulfills His promise even in unlikely, non-affluent times.

Now notice that this promise is not hedged up with little parentheses saying, and it is good only in an affluent society, or it is good only in a stable economy. We look through the word of God and find that in times when there was no promise, no affluence, God fulfilled that promise. Think of that widow who goes out to take her little hand of meal and her little bit of oil and have her last meal and die. And as she honored the Lord by giving to the prophet of God who said, make me a cake first,

28:13 - 28:49 Read in full sermon

The point: Prove God by stepping out in obedience to His commands regarding giving, even when you don't see how it will mathematically work out.

An analogy of a couple planning marriage without biblical warrant and expecting God to intervene, contrasted with stepping out in obedience to a command, illustrates the difference between tempting and proving God.

Prove me. Now what's the difference between tempting God and proving God? Well, when you tempt God, you strike out and do something for which you have no biblical warrant and then you ask God to bail you out.

29:41 - 29:53 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: He addresses whether this Old Testament promise applies in the New Testament economy, affirming its validity through Jesus' teachings (Matthew 6:33, Mark 10:29-30) and Paul's…

Martin shares his personal experience of leaving his family for ministry, and how God fulfilled Mark 10:29-30 by providing loving Christian men and women who cared for his needs, illustrating the hundredfold return.

Pastor Blaze and I were just reflecting on this text just yesterday as we flew out of the London airport and he had to say, goodbye to his bride-to-be and something of the bitter tears of that separation came to his eyes and this verse sprung into my mind and I quoted it to him as we walked down the ramp to get in the VC-10 to fly across the Atlantic. And I think in my own experience how true this has been in leaving my own dear wife and children for those two weeks. God multiplied to me not wives in the sense of the full and God, ordained relationship in all of its levels but loving Christian...

42:32 - 43:16 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: He addresses whether this Old Testament promise applies in the New Testament economy, affirming its validity through Jesus' teachings (Matthew 6:33, Mark 10:29-30) and Paul's…

The analogy of a farmer sowing seed sparingly versus bountifully is used to illustrate the principle of giving and receiving in 2 Corinthians 9.

And it's in the context not of sowing seed out in the field. He's using it as an illustration of how much they will give for this offering for the poor saints in Judea. And he says there is a law of horticulture that is operative in the realm of the Spirit. The man who goes out with his big bag of seed and he looks upon it and says, oh, that's a lot of seed.

45:02 - 45:22 Read in full sermon

The point: Be careful not to automatically assume that material difficulty or sickness means you are living in sin; qualify the text with broader biblical teaching.

Martin critiques prosperity gospel preachers who promise material wealth for giving, using T.L. Osborne as an example of those who teach that sustained poverty implies unbelief or disobedience.

and to be in want and one of the marks of his apostleship in 2 Corinthians 11 27 is a statement of this very thing he says in verse 27 of 2 Corinthians 11 in labor in travail in watchings often in hunger and in thirst in hunger and nakedness and I say to T.L. Osborne and all his crowd who write up their packs of plenty and say give God five dollars through our outfit and inside of three months your bank account will flourish and all this other business without any qualification giving the impression that if there's

54:15 - 55:00 Read in full sermon