Introduction: Counsel of Ungodly

An old commentator's image: 'The philosopher is always beating the bush of his own insight to find the secret of blessedness, but David has put the bird in our hand.' Martin uses it to frame Psalm 1 as God's direct gift of wisdom on happiness.

One of the old commentators has said, the psalmist has said more to the point respecting happiness and blessedness than all the philosophers while they beat the bush. David has put the bird in our hand. Isn't that a beautiful picture? You see the philosopher all the time beating the bush of his own insights and human wisdom to find the secret of blessedness.

8:46 - 9:11 Read in full sermon

The point: Stop resenting biblical negatives; the blessed life requires both 'walk not' and 'delight in the law,' and God has set them side by side in Psalm 1.

A comic scenario: waking up and refusing to live under gravity, trying to float out of bed and out the front window, ending in the emergency room. Martin applies it to Christians who complain about negatives in Scripture.

If you don't, you're going to have some problems. You get up tomorrow morning and say, well, you know this law of gravity, I'm sick and tired of living in bondage to that thing. I never was given an opportunity to vote about it. I was never even given any notice that it was going to be in effect, and I'm sick and tired of having to pick my heavy legs out of the bed in the morning and pick my heavy head off the pillow.

20:05 - 20:29 Read in full sermon

The point: Watch for dry rot — subtle counsel that eats away at will, conscience, and conviction without any overt assault.

A minister's image Pastor Martin quotes at length: great buildings are guarded from fire and tempest but silently eaten away by dry rot until they crumble. So the counsel of the ungodly secretly eats the fiber of will and conscience in those who do not realize it.

A certain ministry recalled the fact that while we were careful to do our utmost to protect great buildings from fire and tempest yet all the while those buildings are liable to another peril certainly not less severe the subtle decay of the very framework of the structure itself. You call that dry rot. You know what dry rot is? The wood just seems to lose all of its strength and just seems to become light and loses its substance and solidity and it just crumbles in your hand.

24:12 - 24:44 Read in full sermon

Mr. Shepherd saw hippies playing cards with no rules — put down any card at any time. And yet they unwittingly imposed rules (same deck, cards rather than shoes). Martin uses it to show anarchy is philosophical fiction — the ungodly still presuppose something.

And they had no rules. And when the one guy wanted to put a card down, he put it down. If he wanted to put down two, or if he wanted to go twice, he did. And the other fellow, and at one point, one of them wanted to pick up the kitty, so he picked it up, or we had Mr. Shepherd ask him, Well, when's the game end?

28:41 - 28:56 Read in full sermon

Pastor Martin suggests a sanctified comic exercise — watch people eat without their knowing. 'We are most like the animals when we eat.' Yet Scripture says 'whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God.'

you've got a sense of humor do it once in a while don't let them know you're watching them just watch people eat it's the strangest exercise it really is if you just focus in now and just watch the fork coming up to the mouth and chomping away and the rest. We're most like the animals when we eat. And yet what does God say? Whether he eat or drink, even in those insignificant activities, when you're most like the animals, do what?

32:21 - 32:47 Read in full sermon

Martin names it in blunt terms: the Playboy philosophy is that 'the chief end of man is to titillate his sexual organs.' Morning, noon, and night. An overt instance of the counsel of the ungodly that most Christians know to reject.

Where a man by the name of Hugh Hefner, who is the apostle of the Playboy philosophy and those men whom he has gathered around him, viewing life with a heart that hates the law of God, with an attitude that says I can interpret this area of life, namely sex and the relationship of a man and woman apart from God, has come to this conclusion.

40:42 - 41:05 Read in full sermon