If Ye then Being Evil, Part 2

In this part of the sermon: Martin introduces the sermon's focus on Jesus' phrase 'If ye, being evil' from Matthew 7:11, emphasizing its importance for understanding humanity's basic sinfulness. He…

Martin describes Jesus' phrase 'If ye, being evil' as a 'stage aside' in a play, highlighting its profound importance despite being a brief interjection.

We have come in our studies of the Sermon on the Mount to that section in chapter 7, which in our regular study we saw was a wonderful promise of all the needed grace to be what the Lord outlines in that which precedes the particular section we dealt with in chapter 7, verses 7 through 11. But in the process of giving this wonderful promise, first of all in the way of a general promise, ask and it shall be given you, and then making it a specific word of promise for everyone that asks it, our Lord then illustrates that promise from a very common human life experience in verse 11, If ye, being ...

0:05 - 1:34 Read in full sermon

The point: Face squarely the biblical teaching on the exceeding sinfulness of sin to make progress in saving Christianity, whether entering or maturing.

Martin uses the analogy of a malady and its remedy to explain that ignorance of sin (the malady) leads to a failure to appreciate salvation (the remedy).

So, whether you're here today, as one who has never been savingly joined to Jesus Christ, or whether you're here today as a mature believer in Christ, if you hope to make any progress in the direction of saving Christianity, whether to enter the threshold or go on in maturity, you've got to face squarely the biblical teaching on the exceeding sinfulness of sin. For what is salvation from its practical standpoint, but that mightily, that mightily work of God by which he is saving a people from sin and its consequences. So, if we are ignorant of the malady, we cannot help but fail to appreciate ...

3:04 - 3:50 Read in full sermon

The point: Understand your sinfulness to determine the content and climate of your prayer life, leading to prayers for holiness and purity.

He uses the metaphor of being 'digged from a terrible pit' or 'hewn from a rock' to illustrate the depth of our former sinfulness, which should provoke praise and gratitude.

of biblical teaching on the subject of man's sinfulness. And then the last principle that we touched on at the close of our message last week, our view of sin will be the governing principle or one of the governing principles in our whole Christian experience. Your prayer life will be determined in content and in climate. When I pray with people and they rush into the presence of God and they blurt out some little pious phrases and rush out again, asking for everything under the sun but grace to be holy, power to be pure, enablement to have a pure mind in the midst of a morally filthy world, t...

5:15 - 6:28 Read in full sermon

The point: Realize that the essence of sin is living for yourself, a denial of God's purpose for your creation, to sense the horror of your sinfulness.

The prophet Isaiah's image of 'all we like sheep have gone astray' is used to pictorially describe humanity's self-centered goal of turning to 'his own way.'

You know what your purpose in life is? You know what governs you? The scripture states it in pictorial form in Isaiah 53 and then in theological language in 2 Corinthians chapter 5. Very familiar text in Isaiah 53. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. What is the goal that governs us until we are savingly joined to Christ? The prophet says we have turned to our own way. It is that goal of self-pleasing. Paul states it in 2 Corinthians 5.15 where he says, And that Christ died for

9:34 - 10:23 Read in full sermon

The point: Realize that the essence of sin is living for yourself, a denial of God's purpose for your creation, to sense the horror of your sinfulness.

Martin personifies sin, imagining it answering 'who are you?' by saying, 'I am the spirit of repudiation of God in place of myself,' to define its essence.

We can't read that and begin to understand it unless we see in all of this that the glory of man is found in that he's a creature made subject to his God. And man's fulfillment in life, the purpose for which he was made, will only be realized as his life issues in God. His motives, his desires, all that he is and does and seeks to be and to have must be in relationship to the God who made him. When Adam sinned and plunged his race into a state of sin, his sin was in practical terms a repudiation of God as his goal and a setting up of himself as his own end. That's what sin is basically. When w...

11:31 - 12:38 Read in full sermon

The point: Realize that the essence of sin is living for yourself, a denial of God's purpose for your creation, to sense the horror of your sinfulness.

He gives examples of people kept from gross sins (drunkenness, adultery, drug use) by common grace, warning against mistaking this restraint for a lack of inherent sinfulness.

That's evil. That's wicked. Because it's a denial of the very purpose for which you were made. And the scripture declares that this is true of every single one of us. We have turned to our own way. We live unto ourselves. And frankly, I'm convinced that we're never going to see any measure of deep conviction here in this assembly or anywhere else until we begin to think in these terms. Some of you who in the common grace of God have been kept for many of the gross forms of sin that have so blotted many of our friends about us. You've never staggered through the door drunk. You've never been fo...

13:14 - 14:22 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Because the carnal mind, the fleshly mind, the fleshly mind, the fleshly mind, the governing principle of each one who is not indwelt by the Holy Spirit is enmity against God.

Martin recounts a religious film where a character describes God as 'having God in our back pocket,' illustrating a man-made, comfortable god that allows for a heart of enmity.

We have not passed out of a state of fleshiness into a state of the Spirit by the new birth. God says we cannot please him. Why? Because there is lying deep within the recesses of our hearts this attitude of enmity to God and to his holy law. The carnal mind is enmity against God, not the God it has created. For you see, the carnal mind will create a God with God. God is enmity against God. This little buddy-buddy God whom everybody worships in our day and this God that I saw portrayed in a religious film that I was asked to preview as a pastor the other day that's going to come into the area ...

18:42 - 19:38 Read in full sermon

The point: Discover that your heart is enmity against God, not just outwardly but in motive and desire, or you will be deceived into thinking all is well.

He contrasts the 'buddy-buddy God' with the true God, before whom seraphim and cherubim cry 'holy, holy, holy,' to emphasize the holiness that the carnal mind hates.

you can feel at home with him while you've still got a heart of enmity. But the God of the Bible, that high and that lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, the one before whom seraphim and cherubim with veiled face and veiled feet cry one to another holy, holy, holy, that God, the human heart has enmity against him. It hates his throne. It hates his holiness. It hates his rule. It hates his claims. It is not subject to him. Neither indeed can it be. And so there's not a basic purpose of the living God which unregenerate flesh does not naturally and flatly oppose. There's not a cl...

20:00 - 20:55 Read in full sermon

The point: Discover that your heart is enmity against God, not just outwardly but in motive and desire, or you will be deceived into thinking all is well.

Paul's pre-conversion blamelessness under the law (Philippians 3) is used as an anecdote to show how one can be outwardly righteous yet inwardly an enemy of God, until the law reveals inner sin.

That's what Paul had to discover, and he tells us about it in Romans 7. Philippians 3, he said, is touching the external letter of the law, I was blameless. And in keeping the letter, he said, I thought I was at one in spirit with the God who gave that law. If anyone would have come to Paul and said, do you know that your heart is enmity against God? He would have said, who are you talking to? Enmity against God? Enmity against God? Enmity against God?

21:05 - 21:28 Read in full sermon

The point: Consider your response to the statement that your heart is a 'veritable cesspool of all forms of uncleanness' as an indication of your state of grace.

The human heart is described as a 'bottomless well of evil,' from which Christ 'scoops down' and reveals all manner of sins, emphasizing the internal source of wickedness.

And so go ahead, finish what you're doing. Do this little difficult joke, and I look at this forward , and I search into, and I look at Our Lord Jesus gives us the clearest description in Mark 7 where in his controversy with the Pharisees who were taking him to task for his neglect of ceremonial washings our Lord said these words Mark chapter 7 beginning with verse 21 For from within out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts adulteries fornications murders thefts covetousness wickedness deceit lasciviousness an evil eye blasphemy pride foolishness all these things come from within and defi...

25:17 - 26:46 Read in full sermon

The point: Consider your response to the statement that your heart is a 'veritable cesspool of all forms of uncleanness' as an indication of your state of grace.

The well of iniquity is further described as an 'artesian well with a backlog of pressure continually seeking to rise up and spill out,' illustrating the constant internal pressure of sin.

and gone on until he had named every single sin that's ever been committed by all the sons of men through all the ages of human history and he could have drawn the seed of every one of those sins from your own heart and from mine from within out of the heart of man proceed and then he names God in his common grace may allow circumstances nationally locally family wise background temperament God may use in his common grace a multitude of influences and he may use to keep that well contained for it's not like a standing well it's like an artesian well with a backlog of pressure continually seeki...

26:46 - 28:16 Read in full sermon

The point: Consider your response to the statement that your heart is a 'veritable cesspool of all forms of uncleanness' as an indication of your state of grace.

The human heart is called a 'veritable cesspool of iniquity and uncleanness' to vividly convey its profound corruption.

and gone on until he had named every single sin that's ever been committed by all the sons of men through all the ages of human history and he could have drawn the seed of every one of those sins from your own heart and from mine from within out of the heart of man proceed and then he names God in his common grace may allow circumstances nationally locally family wise background temperament God may use in his common grace a multitude of influences and he may use to keep that well contained for it's not like a standing well it's like an artesian well with a backlog of pressure continually seeki...

26:46 - 28:16 Read in full sermon

The point: Consider your response to the statement that your heart is a 'veritable cesspool of all forms of uncleanness' as an indication of your state of grace.

The Queen of Sheba's statement about Solomon's glory, 'the half has not been told,' is applied to the ugliness of the human heart, suggesting its sinfulness is even greater than described.

you don't know the half of it what's your response? don't answer verbally but you answer in your own mind as you'll have to answer in the day of judgment you answer when you're told that there lies within your breast your breast young person refined culture educated there lies within your breast a veritable cesspool of uncleanness a rule of iniquity if you've been awakened at all by the Holy Spirit and fled to Christ now can look at your heart through eyes illumined by the Spirit you know that that's a pretty mild description of that which you've got to wrestle with day after day you know that...

28:45 - 30:14 Read in full sermon

The point: Consider your response to the statement that your heart is a 'veritable cesspool of all forms of uncleanness' as an indication of your state of grace.

Martin recounts a mature saint saying the most horrible thing he ever saw was 'the heart my mother and my daddy gave me,' to illustrate a profound, Spirit-wrought conviction of sin.

you don't know the half of it what's your response? don't answer verbally but you answer in your own mind as you'll have to answer in the day of judgment you answer when you're told that there lies within your breast your breast young person refined culture educated there lies within your breast a veritable cesspool of uncleanness a rule of iniquity if you've been awakened at all by the Holy Spirit and fled to Christ now can look at your heart through eyes illumined by the Spirit you know that that's a pretty mild description of that which you've got to wrestle with day after day you know that...

28:45 - 30:14 Read in full sermon

The point: Face honestly the depths of your malady to be kept from accepting a false, sub-biblical remedy for sin.

He uses the analogy of a football player who 'incorporates God as his quarterback' into his existing self-pleasing life, to illustrate a false, sub-biblical remedy that doesn't involve radical transformation.

of his grace that'll go as deep as my need I realize that my need is not that I'm moving in the right direction and just omitted God and now I need to sort of incorporate God in with all the rest this is the average concept today here's the big brawny back football player concerned about nothing but lugging a pile of pig skin over a goal line and he's ignored God and someone comes along and says look you need a better quarterback and you need God for your quarterback and he says well that's right you know you do get into some pinches in life where things get kind of rough and I can't get much ...

34:41 - 36:09 Read in full sermon

The point: Beware when the thought of what you could do no longer drives you to your knees, as this indicates pride and prayerlessness.

The proverb 'pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall' is used to warn against prayerlessness as an indication of pride and a lack of watchfulness.

not been entirely banished and so that recognition that those sin has been dethroned as the master whom I willingly serve sin has not been banished off to some dark corner of the universe where it's no longer a problem to me and I realize that though I now have motives for purity that I never had before though there is the indwelling of the spirit and the intercession of Christ to keep me from sin I will realize as the Bible teaches me that those potentials are still within me and that it's only through the intervention of God's grace and the keeping power of his spirit that I shall be kept th...

40:39 - 42:08 Read in full sermon

The point: An honest view of your sinfulness will keep you stable, guarding against the extremes of perfectionism and contentment in sin.

He compares a child of God panting after the Lord to an explorer who is liable to fall off a cliff, illustrating that spiritual growth involves risks of ensnarement, requiring constant watchfulness.

for grace and so it'll keep you from perfectionism it'll keep you from indifference it'll keep you from a lot of the weird teaching that floats around concerning the Christian life and the longer I study my Bible what little bit God's taught me the more I become suspicious of anybody or any movement that offers me an experience in Jesus Christ that will rob me of praying half the Psalms Psalms in which the servants of God are crying out in agony of soul for their sin crying out because of their darkness I'm afraid when anyone tells me there's something to be had that makes me so I can't use th...

44:06 - 45:35 Read in full sermon