The Damning Delusion of Presumption

In this part of the sermon: Presumption is defined as taking something for granted without contrary evidence. Martin explains how those raised with the means of grace (Word, authentic Christians, preaching…

The judicial principle of 'presumed innocent until proven guilty' is used to define presumption as taking something for granted when there is no overwhelming evidence to the contrary, setting up the spiritual application.

to the damning delusion of presumption concerning your salvation. Now, let me define what I mean by this. Now, let me define what I mean by this. Now, let me define what I mean by this. Now, let me define what I mean by presume or presumption. The dictionary definition is, To take for granted, to accept as true lacking evidence to the contrary. Our whole judicial system is based on the principle that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty, and

5:50 - 6:22 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Presumption is defined as taking something for granted without contrary evidence. Martin explains how those raised with the means of grace (Word, authentic Christians, preaching…

The casual use of God's name on TV shows like 'The Price is Right' and 'Antique Roadshow' is given as an example of trivializing God, highlighting a moral deviation that a presuming person might avoid.

standards of the Bible. I have been reared in a setting where my conscience has been enlightened by the Ten Commandments as a distillation of God's moral law, and I have no real, fervent, passionate rejection of any of those precepts. I'm reasonably respectful of my mother and father. I attend church. I treat the Lord's day as a different day. My mouth is not filled with oaths and curses. I have not fallen into the wretched pattern of one's of America's crowning sins, the profaning of the name of God. Everyone is saying, oh God this, oh God that, oh God the other thing, from the Price is Right...

9:14 - 10:19 Read in full sermon

Driving home: What's wrong is that this is a presumption is a damning delusion. And why is it a damning delusion? For this simple reason, that according to the Bible, a true believer, one who is born of the Spirit of God, is marked by…

Martin recounts how some listeners described their conversion as a dramatic, cataclysmic shift from paganism to biblical Christianity, illustrating a clear, undeniable work of grace.

And I want to underscore again, whether it is implanted dramatically and suddenly, cataclysmically, as some of you have had it implanted when God took you out of the universe of paganism and planted you into the universe of biblical religion. Some of you spoke to me this morning and said, that illustration, Pastor, described me. I was an outright pagan. My whole universe was skewed.

20:17 - 20:45 Read in full sermon

Driving home: What's wrong is that this is a presumption is a damning delusion. And why is it a damning delusion? For this simple reason, that according to the Bible, a true believer, one who is born of the Spirit of God, is marked by…

The imperceptible transition from night to dawn to day is used to illustrate that God's grace can work gradually, making it hard to pinpoint the exact moment of conversion, yet resulting in the clear 'noonday' of faith.

Well, whether God does it dramatically, whether He does it like the rising of the sun, where does night become day? Where does dawn overtake the night? And where does day overtake the dawn? I don't know and you don't know.

20:57 - 21:14 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The first mark of a true Christian is a positive love for God's truth, not merely an absence of intellectual controversy. Drawing from Psalm 1 and Psalm 119, Martin illustrates…

The scenario of someone verbally abusing one's wife and the husband's emotional response (or lack thereof) is used to illustrate that true love for God's Word means being emotionally moved when it is abused or ignored.

When I love someone or love something, I cannot stand to see it abused and be unmoved emotionally. You say you love your wife. Could someone chew her out in the supermarket because they thought she did something unkind to them, and you stand there and not be moved emotionally when someone chews out your wife? She could see you stand there amused by it all.

26:41 - 27:07 Read in full sermon

Driving home: People who have a mere, intellectual acceptability in their relationship to the word of God. But no real love for that word. No open mouth panting for the word. Will very soon grow weary of painstaking, careful, substant…

The decline of Princeton Seminary, once a bastion of truth, is used as a historical example of what happens when the 'damning delusion of presumption' is allowed to take hold in a church or institution.

up. Some bogeyman. This is the reality of churches all around us throughout our country. If you've ever gone with Mr. Burkett to his Princeton tour, you say, how could that place where Warfield taught and preached and the great men of God who once filled that place with truth, how could it be where it is today? Today, it didn't happen overnight. It happens when this damning delusion of presumption is allowed to take the field. Let's take up the second thing. The person coming to the threshold of adulthood says

33:37 - 34:30 Read in full sermon

The point: Love pointed, applicatory preaching that searches your heart, leading to conviction and deeper communion with Christ.

The 'searchlight of the word of God' going into 'dark bat-filled corners of your heart' is a metaphor for the convicting power of applicatory preaching, which true believers welcome as 'sweet pain'.

Now you see, there is. see how applicable this is to the second generation if this is not understood and if this is not regulative of what we do in presenting ourselves for baptism and membership and for those of you upon whom the burden of leadership will fall in the coming years if the lord tarries if you do not understand this in overseeing the doors of entrance and dismission from christ church what will happen when you have a people who have nothing but external formal morality who do not have an internalized relationship to the law of god in all its length and breadth and they love it in...

40:39 - 42:05 Read in full sermon

The point: Be a risk-taking, entrepreneurial people for Christ, seeking new frontiers for His honor, rather than settling for a comfortable religion.

The church's sacrificial commitment to planting churches in Pakistan and Pennsylvania, even when financially strapped, is used as an example of love for Christ driving risk-taking and entrepreneurial spirit, contrasting with a comfortable, passive religion.

With all of my sins and all of the sins of my fellow leaders, elders and deacons, with all of our sins as a church, by the grace of God, we've been willing to take some risk for Christ and make a few sacrifices for His truth. The fact that our brother and sister sit here, in this church, without all of the machinery of modern missiology, are committed to see a church planted there in Pakistan, the land of Islam, the bastion of Islam. It's love to Christ that drives my brother and sister to get on that plane again tomorrow. It's love to Christ that will put our dear Pastor Smith and Pastor Bark...

53:23 - 54:46 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The fourth mark of a true Christian is a peculiar, God-like, active love for the people of God, beyond mere social comfort or absence of dislike. Citing John 13:35 and 1 John 3…

The 'fountain of love' in the congregation is described as an 'artesian well' that gushes forth when need is made known, illustrating the active, spontaneous nature of God-like love among believers.

And the people of God the minute they became aware of it were like metal filings around a magnet. We get a list of meals sent in for weeks in advance. We didn't ask for any meals. It's like that fountain of love is an artesian well in the breast, the corporate breast of this congregation.

61:01 - 61:25 Read in full sermon

The point: Be determined, God helping you, that your influence will ensure the church does not accept the delusive, damning presumption of people thinking they're saved with only the negatives.

The idea that knowing what's happening on earth might turn heaven into hell for some, particularly the worthies of Princeton if they saw its current state, is used to emphasize the seriousness of spiritual decline and God's merciful sparing of such knowledge.

He's never claimed to be. He's honest about his own sins and his own ignorance and failures. But, Lord, I believe the burden of his heart is rooted in the Bible right upon my heart. You want to give an old man comfort when he lies on his deathbed, you come by and squeeze my hand and look me in the eye and say, Pastor, I'm determined, God helping me, that whatever influence I have, this church will, by the grace of God, not be given to the dogs because we accept the delusive, damning presumption of people thinking they're saved because they've just got the negatives. It's a serious thing, dear ...

65:01 - 66:10 Read in full sermon