He Delights in the Law of God

The point: Beware of becoming an 'all-negative' or 'all-positive' Christian — Scripture commands both mortification of sin and pursuit of new-life graces.

The 'all positive' approach is like trying to kill an oak by pulling off its leaves — it never reaches the root. Negatives have their place because sin must be mortified at the root.

That's pulling off oak leaves. And so the figure utterly breaks down. But God has in his word this beautiful balance. Having given us the negative and seen its proper place in the life of blessedness, we now come to the positive.

5:05 - 5:20 Read in full sermon

Driving home: We delight in that to which our nature and dispositions have a spontaneous and pleasurable affinity.

A fish delights in water and a bird in the air because each has been given a nature suited to its element. The blessed man delights in God's law because he has been given a nature suited to it.

well the fact that it's made for water its nature and disposition has been created to make it at home in water I think of this as I was thinking of the message and trying to think of some homey illustrations when I've gone fishing occasionally even with some of you men and we get a bucket of minnows or some little herring and we're going to try to catch larger fish with the smaller fish and maybe there's a little minnow that's flopped out in the bottom of the boat and he kicks around for a while and then he begins to get kind of still and lifeless And the moment you pick him up and put him bac...

9:34 - 10:28 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The only representation of Christ that a believer needs to deepen his faith, to strengthen his love is the picture of Christ in Holy Scripture.

Martin gently questions the painter who claimed to have woken with a mental image of Christ — Scripture is the only divinely-given portrait of the Savior.

Now, I'm not accusing Mr. Solomon of being a liar when he said he woke up in the middle of the night with this mental image of Christ and drew the picture. I question that on the basis of Holy Scripture. If God wanted us to have a picture of Christ, he would have allowed someone to, at artistic ability, to record what he looked like.

25:17 - 25:36 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Anyone who is careless and indifferent about hearing the word of truth has the earmarks of an unregenerate person.

Salmon literally beat themselves to death thrashing upstream against rocks to return to the waters where they were born. So the believer is forever drawn back to the Word that gave him life.

How is a believer like a salmon? Well, some of you have read something of the ways of salmon. And you've seen pictures of these salmon literally beating themselves to death, thrashing their way up the steep rapids and many times up very high obstacles to make their way back to the place where they themselves were spawned. And there the female salmon will spawn and then many times die.

27:07 - 27:36 Read in full sermon

The point: Stop saying you want holiness while applying only 'six drops' of Scripture — apply the means God has appointed for sanctification with full intent.

If a child says 'I want to be clean' but then dabs himself with six drops of water, he's not really seeking cleanness. Same with believers who claim to want holiness but barely apply Scripture.

I believe I used this illustration some years ago, or one similar to it. If my children should come to me and say, Daddy, with all my heart, I want to be as clean as possible when I come to the table tonight. Well, I promptly direct them to where the soap and water and towels are, and I say, now apply yourself to the proper means. Let the water run till it's warm enough.

34:16 - 34:37 Read in full sermon

The point: Remember the love of your espousals — the times when you couldn't wait to come hear the Word — and let that memory drive you to repentance.

An eagle raised among turkeys was content to scratch with them until the owner carried him to a high cliff and threw him off — his eagle nature awoke and he soared. So the believer who has lost his delight.

have their root here, that you've lost your delight in the law of the Lord, and that delight must be rekindled at any cost. The story is told, and it's supposed to be a true story, of a man who captured an eagle in its infant stages, and he put a chain around that eagle's leg and put it out with his turkeys, and he fed it turkey food and the eagle used to try to break away from the chain but after a while he got so accustomed to being a turkey that it was content to just wander around the yard with the turkeys eat the food of the turkeys maybe get up on top of a little shack and then flutter d...

44:15 - 45:01 Read in full sermon

The point: Apply Revelation 2:5 — repent, AND do the first works. Read, hear, and obey God's Word in cold blood until appetite returns.

Martin tells of his sister who had grown so fearful of gaining a pound that she had to be force-fed before her stomach would accept normal food again — pictures the spiritual force-feeding sometimes required to recover hunger for Scripture.

I had one of my sisters. She was so concerned that she did not gain a pound that she practically starved herself to death. And then when it came time to where she could eat normally, she had so shrunk her stomach that eating anything more than a teaspoonful of everything made her feel like she was going to bloat herself and kill herself. And so she needed to go through this painful process of force-feeding herself until she stretched her stomach again.

50:04 - 50:30 Read in full sermon