Specific Directives, Part 1

The point: Imagine yourself in a private counseling session, acknowledging an area of sinful patterns where you've made little progress.

Martin frames the sermon as a public session of private pastoral counsel, inviting listeners to imagine themselves coming to him with a persistent sin problem, making the instruction more personal and direct.

In a very real sense, what I'm doing tonight is giving you a session of pastoral counsel in public. And I want you to imagine yourself as having come to me in the privacy of the study, acknowledging that there was an area in which you seemed to be making very little progress with respect to a matter...

6:14 - 6:37 Read in full sermon

The point: Take to heart the preliminary charge: undergo a serious exercise of self-examination to honestly face all the ways you are making provision for your particular lust.

He uses the analogy of being mastered by one's mouth or physical appearance betraying gluttony to illustrate how sin can control a person.

Now, please, please don't fall asleep on me. And take that as just so much preacher's rhetoric. Hear me now. If you would make progress with that area of physical appetite that seems to have you mastered, your mouth, in a sense, is your master, and you know it, and the moment I say it, your conscience smites you.

12:52 - 13:16 Read in full sermon

The point: Undertake self-examination honestly, seeking God with all your heart and not merely 'howling upon your bed'.

Martin uses Hosea 7:14 to describe insincere prayer, where people 'howl upon their beds' in pain but do not genuinely seek God with their whole heart, illustrating a lack of honesty in self-examination.

They will never come to me with their heart, but they howl upon their beds. They assemble themselves for grain and new wine. They rebel against me. In the midst of the evident tokens of the judgment of God upon them, they had enough spiritual presence to know that people in such a mess ought to pray. And that God says their prayer is a sham. They're not crying

22:48 - 23:14 Read in full sermon

The point: Undertake self-examination thoroughly, leaving no aspect of the network of provision for your flesh to remain.

He uses the metaphor of building a wall with 'untempered mortar' (Jeremiah 8:11) to describe superficial efforts to deal with sin, emphasizing the need for thoroughness.

Slightly the hurt of the daughter of my people. Saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace. And then the prophet goes on to say, they have put untempered mortar there. They've tried to build up a wall with mud that simply won't hold the stones together.

24:55 - 25:19 Read in full sermon

The point: Undertake self-examination thoroughly, leaving no aspect of the network of provision for your flesh to remain.

Martin uses the metaphor of a network or system of provision for the flesh, warning that leaving even 'one avenue' open will allow lust to find it in a moment of temptation.

This task must be undertaken thoroughly. For our text says, And for the flesh make no provision. If we allow, if we allow, one aspect of that whole network of the system that feeds our flesh to remain, be sure that in a moment of temptation, your flesh will find that one avenue of provision.

25:20 - 25:47 Read in full sermon

The point: Undertake self-examination thoroughly, leaving no aspect of the network of provision for your flesh to remain.

He quotes a hymn writer's lines about leaving 'no unguarded place' to reinforce the need for thoroughness in fortifying against sin.

You may block up a hundred others, but it's the one you leave that will betray you. Leave no unguarded place, no weakness of the soul. Take every virtue, every grace, and fortify the whole. The hymn writer understood that principle.

25:49 - 26:10 Read in full sermon

The point: Rid yourself of every unnecessary possession, relationship, or activity which becomes a provision for your particular lust.

Martin uses the hypothetical example of someone struggling with covetousness and impulse spending, facilitated by credit cards, to illustrate how unnecessary possessions become provisions for lust.

which becomes a provision for the flesh. Suppose with me that the person who is in my study has confessed a problem with covetousness, a terrible sin of covetousness. And when I do a little probing around, and these illustrations are all hypothetical, I am not using one example that to my knowledge has ever come out of a personal counseling session. And after almost 30 years of dealing with people's sins, it's been awfully hard to come up with, let's suppose, that.

30:36 - 31:16 Read in full sermon

The point: Get rid of 'food' (provisions) that feed your lusts, rather than just praying about them.

He uses the hypothetical example of someone struggling with overindulgence in coffee, Coca-Cola, beer, or wine, illustrating how these unnecessary items in the home become provisions for physical appetites.

Well, someone else comes and says, well, my particular problem is overindulgence in coffee. I just love coffee. And once I have my first cup, I've got to have my second, my third, and I've read enough and I know enough to know that when you're pumping five, seven, ten cups of coffee in your day, all that caffeine is not good. There's enough suspicion about its influence upon the heart, and I know it makes me edgy and cranky, but I just can't seem to say no to coffee when I smell it.

34:17 - 34:50 Read in full sermon

The point: If a dating relationship consistently leads to sexual sin, break off the relationship.

Martin uses the hypothetical example of a young couple repeatedly falling into sexual sin during dates to illustrate how an unnecessary relationship can be a provision for lust, suggesting breaking it off.

A young man comes to me and says, Pastor, I don't know what to do. I'm having a terrible time. Every time I go out with this particular girl, before I know it, we've gone from holding hands to kissing and then into heavy petting, and we know it's wrong, and we ask the Lord to forgive us, and then we ask God to help us, and we vow we'll never do it again, but we fall again and again. Ever occur to you, young man, the best way to get rid of that problem is never to go with that girl again?

37:20 - 37:50 Read in full sermon

The point: If a dating relationship consistently leads to sexual sin, break off the relationship.

He uses the analogy of a diabetic losing a foot or someone donating a kidney to show that what seems 'necessary' can become 'expendable' when life itself is at stake, urging believers to be radical in cutting off sin-provoking things.

and I used the word unnecessary possession. But don't be too quick to say something is necessary when it isn't. Every one of us sitting here tonight with two feet thinks that our feet are necessary. You let one of us get an advanced case of diabetes and have the right foot become shot through with gangrene, and the surgeon says, May I have your permission and the permission of your wife to cut off your foot.

38:32 - 39:02 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin shares a personal illustration of his own struggle with competitive sports to emphasize that what is an 'unnecessary provision' for one person's lust may not be for…

Martin shares his personal testimony of an 'addictive, idolatrous attachment to sports' before conversion, and how he had to rid himself of competitive group sports as a provision for pride and idolatry, while acknowledging others can participate without sin.

That's one of the great dangers. If something in the cupboard is a provision for a peculiar lust of mine, I assume that if I combine my brothers with my brother, I assume that if I combine my brothers with my brother, other's pantry and see the same commodity in his, it must be the same thing to him. I have no right to assume that. Now I'll tell something on myself, and this is a real situation. Before the Lord

40:51 - 41:14 Read in full sermon