Sensualism

The point: Identify which mass-media voices are most consistently shaping your appetites — and ration or eliminate exposure where the counsel is openly sensualist.

Martin cites a radio promo for the McCanns — a popular cooking show whose entire stated purpose is to titillate listeners' taste buds — as a vivid sample of sensualist counsel saturating mass media.

As I looked through that magazine, I could see the philosophy of sensualism oozing out of every advertisement, almost out of every single article in there, occasionally a good article dealing with the home life or family life. But the overriding philosophy is that of sensualism. If you as a woman are to find sensualism, real fulfillment, how are you going to find it? In making yourself as beautiful as you can be to your eyes and the eyes of others, making yourself smell as nice as you can smell to yourself and to others, and then in learning how to handle your sexual appetites in a way that wi...

9:08 - 9:49 Read in full sermon

If you scare an animal it shivers, if it itches it scratches; with no world beyond the grave, its existence is bounded entirely by its senses — exactly what evolution teaches man to be.

In the first place, you notice that God was the author of man's senses. He created Adam and Eve with an eyeball that is a marvelous, intricate instrument. It has capacity for light, for distinguishing of color. It can take in the whole spectrum of color.

16:54 - 17:14 Read in full sermon

Martin paints the unfallen creation: birds singing in harmony, animals at peace, no thorns to prick Adam's finger when he reached for a rose — sensory delight uncursed.

You can have the whole spectrum in season and out of season. It's there for you to have, Adam. But, notice, verses 16 and 17 of chapter 2. Though you may eat of every tree, fully satisfy your sensual appreciation of food, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die, Adam.

21:04 - 21:32 Read in full sermon

Bunyan's two children — Passion who must have everything now, and Patience who waits for the world to come — illustrate why sensualism is so seductive: appetite is always now.

You get it? Things present and our fleshly appetite are such near neighbors. And because things to come and carnal sense are such strangers one to another, therefore it is that the first of these so suddenly fall into friendship. That is,

27:35 - 27:53 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The man and woman that embrace out of the revealed will of God will one day hug to their bosoms the flames of hell.

An ad calling whiskey 'soft enough for a woman' — Martin says the man who meditates in God's law sees beyond the soft image to the same woman in hell crying for one drop of water.

the man who meditates in the law of God sees beyond that and he sees the poor, the son of that woman with eyes uplifted in hell crying out for a drop of water to cool that down. Not a shot of Calvary, just a drop of water. You see, the man whose thought patterns are steeped in Holy Scripture, he will not buy the gospel of sensualism for he knows that to gratify any of these appetites without respect to the will of God is to welcome the judgment of God. Well, if this is so then, that as he meditates in the law of God, as he meditates in the law of God, he realizes sensual pleasure was never giv...

32:28 - 33:28 Read in full sermon

Martin tells of his friend Mr. Reisinger ordering him a $6.95 steak — and his conscience wincing with every bite — to expose his own ascetic streak masquerading as spirituality.

the Christian the man who meditates in the law of God will not only face these sensual capacities as God's gift and receive them and thank God for them and secondly by God's grace subject them to God's laws but now listen carefully he will regulate them by the fact of the presence of sin you see our sensual appetites in a disordered world can wreak havoc with us before sin entered there was no danger that Adam and Eve would destroy themselves by their sensual appetites but since sin has entered and has affected the whole person the mind the appetites the affections the will therefore my sensua...

51:08 - 52:37 Read in full sermon

The point: Christian women should consciously dress so as not to provoke lust in fallen men, refusing to slavishly imitate the ungodly counsel of fashion magazines.

You can't put dry powder near an open flame and expect no explosion — Martin's image for the foolishness of feeding eyes and appetites and then expecting purity.

The point: Be willing to forgo legitimate appetites at times — money, food, even marital intimacy — for the sake of prayer and gospel ministry in a sin-cursed world.

Martin candidly admits that after twelve years of marriage his heart still skips when he sees his wife — affirming that holy desire is part of God-made humanity, not sin.