During the Sermon, Part 3

Luke 8:18 Take Heed How You Hear

Pastor Albert N. Martin continues his series on "During the Sermon," expounding Luke 8:18, "Take heed therefore how you hear." He emphasizes that believers must hear God's Word with a "resolute fixation of mind," a duty grounded in the first and great commandment (Matthew 22:37), specific commands (Deuteronomy 32:46, Luke 9:44), and apostolic directives (2 Timothy 2:7). Martin warns against mental sins like daydreaming and laziness, arguing that the battle for spiritual growth is won or lost in the mind, especially given the active opposition of indwelling sin and the devil during preaching. He applies this to the cultivation of mental vigor, cautioning against media consumption that dulls the mind, and the importance of a distraction-free setting for corporate worship.

4 illustrations in this sermon

Directive 1: Hear with Resolute Fixation of Mind

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Resolute Horse at Starting Gate

The point: Hear the Word of God with a resolute fixation of your minds.

A horse refusing to enter a starting gate, planting its feet and unyielding, illustrates the meaning of 'resolute' as being set in purpose and tenacious.

Occasionally you may have opportunity to watch a horse race on television. If you ever watch one, I hope that's the only place you watch it. And they're trying to load the horses into the starting gate. And lo and behold, one of those horses plants his horse, four feet and he is resolute in his determination that he's not getting the starting gate.

12:08 - 12:33 Read in full sermon

Illustrating Resolute Fixation with Velcro

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Velcro Fastener

Driving home: If you come like the coated Teflon interior of a frying pan, no preacher under heaven can do you an ounce of good. And that's the way some of you come.

The mechanism of Velcro, with its hooks and loops, is used to illustrate how the preacher's 'hooks of God's truth' should fasten onto the listener's 'loops of spiritual nylon' for effective hearing.

The matter of Velcro came to mind. You know how Velcro works?

14:09 - 14:13 Read in full sermon

Application: Resist Mental Sins and Cultivate Mental Vigor

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Couch Potato's Cardiac Arrest

The point: Radically change patterns of TV watching and passive music listening if they are making your mind flabby and hindering your ability to listen to biblical preaching.

A couch potato who suffers cardiac arrest when forced to run illustrates how mental flabbiness from passive media consumption makes one unfit for the mental demands of biblical preaching.

belting down his package after package of potato chips and junk food, there's an emergency in which he needs to go out and run for a half a mile to save the life of one of his own children. And after the first, three hundred yards, he falls with a cardiac arrest. His days of being a couch potato have left him unfit for the crisis of trying to save his own son. But what's true of the body is true of the mind.

49:11 - 49:45 Read in full sermon

Call to Resolute Hearing and Warning to Unconverted

person anecdote

Shipbuilder and Whitfield's Preaching

The point: Turn from drugs and alcohol abuse that attack the noble faculty of the mind, where God sets up shop to do His work.

The story of a shipbuilder who could 'lay every plank' under most preachers but 'couldn't lay one plank' under Whitfield illustrates the powerful, compelling work of the Spirit that can make even unwilling hearers listen.

Sten to Stern, front to back. Port to starboard. He said he could lay the keel in every plank under most preachers but he said when he got under Whitfield, he couldn't lay one plank. He couldn't lay one plank. What he meant was that the spirit of God so rested upon Whitfield and he preached in such power that he found himself listening in spite of himself.

65:53 - 66:17 Read in full sermon

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