Longing for His Return, Part 5

Driving home: And it is the very nature of faith. It is the very nature of faith and love that it longs to see and to be with its object.

Martin recounts calling his wife daily from a conference, hearing her voice but not seeing her, to illustrate how faith and love for an unseen person naturally create a longing to be physically present with them.

When I was away last week and gave AT&T a good bit of business, calling 1-800-AT-T, whatever the things are, the 2258-225 or 5228.

47:25 - 47:39 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: He explains that it is the very nature of faith and love to long to see and be with its object, using a personal anecdote about his wife to illustrate this inherent desire.

He poses a hypothetical scenario where he detours to tourist attractions on the way home, arriving late without calling his wife, to demonstrate how such actions would rightly cause her to question the sincerity of his professed love and desire to be with her.

Now, what would you think if on the way home, I saw an advertisement for some particular tourist attraction, and I stopped and spent two or three hours there. And then got another 40 miles and another tourist attraction, stopped there. And then I staggered in, 9 o'clock at night, without ever calling my wife. And I greeted her at the door and said, oh, sweetheart, so good to see you.

49:05 - 49:27 Read in full sermon

The point: If you are not eagerly awaiting and loving Christ's return, ask God if you are in a healthy spiritual state.

Martin references a book about the Bataan Death March and the rescue from a Japanese prison camp, highlighting the long-term vitamin starvation and diseases suffered by the soldiers, as a metaphor for the spiritual sickness and deficiencies of some believers.

I saw the review in the New York Times a few weeks ago and I had one of my friends who is able to order things over the internet to get it from Amazon.com. One of the men here old enough with me to remember facts of the Second World War remembers that horrible death march. Of our soldiers over there in the Philippines, this is the account of that marvelous rescue from that Japanese prison camp where about two thirds of them had died or been butchered and murdered.

61:04 - 61:33 Read in full sermon