After the Sermon Part 2

The point: Flee to Christ who stands ready to be to you everything that he has pledged himself to be in the word and promise of the gospel.

Martin uses the imagery of 'trials that are like a river and a flood, a fiery furnace of affliction' to describe the difficulties of life, contrasting the Christian's hope with the unbeliever's despair.

What a blessed thing to be a Christian and to know that all of those promises in quotation marks from stanza two to the end are ours in Christ. And for you who are out of Christ, and life right now holds little in the way of anything that could be called trials that are like a river and a flood, a fiery furnace of affliction, for most such will come sooner or later. Some slip through, Psalm 73 underscores that, some slip through life relatively unscathed, but the scripture says as an ordinary rule,

0:14 - 0:58 Read in full sermon

The point: Flee to Christ who stands ready to be to you everything that he has pledged himself to be in the word and promise of the gospel.

The metaphor 'man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward' illustrates the natural and inevitable presence of hardship in human life.

man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward. What a horrible thing to have no such promises to undergird you when your rivers come, when your fiery furnaces come, to face them all alone,

0:58 - 1:14 Read in full sermon

The point: Flee to Christ who stands ready to be to you everything that he has pledged himself to be in the word and promise of the gospel.

Martin uses the metaphors of an 'eternal fiery furnace' and an 'eternal flood of the unleashed fury of Almighty God' to describe the eternal judgment awaiting those outside of Christ.

then to go off into an eternal fiery furnace, into an eternal flood of the unleashed fury of Almighty God. If you're not a Christian, whether you have any felt sense of it or not, you are in the moment, most miserable, pitiable condition imaginable. May God grant that just the singing of the people of God and the ringing affirmation of their faith will make you jealous to become one of us and cause you to flee to Christ who stands ready to be to you everything that he has pledged himself to be in the word and promise of the gospel.

1:16 - 2:00 Read in full sermon

The point: Add to our growing discipline of repetition the discipline of supplication, supplicating God that he would write his word upon the fleshly tables of our hearts.

The metaphor of 'spiritual leakage' describes the loss of spiritual blessing when fervent supplication is absent, preventing the word from reaching the heart.

I will I will moreover for this I will be inquired of to do it clearly indicating without the inquiry to do it we will miss the very blessing that is promised you have not because you ask not how much spiritual leakage there is for one to focus earnestly supplication that the preaching and teaching we have heard and perhaps even repeated so that there is some mental and intellectual retention of its substance is never brought into the very center of our being

25:24 - 26:08 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: The second aspect of supplication is asking God to incline our hearts to believe and obey the word. Drawing extensively from Psalm 119, Martin illustrates how the psalmist prays…

Martin explains that Psalm 119's acrostic structure (eight-verse sections beginning with Hebrew alphabet letters) served as a memory device for retaining its truths.

must God put something upon our hearts God must do something in our hearts and let's look at about five or six clear illustrations of this in the hundred and nineteenth psalm I'm sure almost all if not all of you know that this lengthiest chapter in the Bible is one in which you have eight verse sections each section beginning with a letter in the Hebrew alphabet and so for a Hebrew it was a means of helping to retain by this memory device the substance of what was here and the great theme

26:52 - 27:37 Read in full sermon

The point: Don't be proud of your ability to push the word away; it ought to humble you that you can sit under that word that promises life and salvation in Christ.

The analogy of 'someone trying to use his fingernail to etch words in granite' illustrates the futility of the preached word impacting a hard, unconverted heart.

neither indeed can it be what a tragic thing to sit under the preaching of the word and to have no more effect upon you than someone trying to use his fingernail to etch words in granite my dear unconverted friend don't be don't be proud of your ability to push the word away it ought to humble you that you can sit under that word that promises life and salvation in Christ that calls you in the words of Ezekiel to turn from the way of death and to live to make you a new heart

43:52 - 44:36 Read in full sermon

The point: When you sense yourself straying from that word pray seek me oh God for I've gone astray like a lost sheep bring my heart back into a loving embrace of all of your word and your precepts and bring my feet into conformity…

Martin quotes a gospel chorus that beautifully captures Jesus' words about His yoke being easy and His burden light, reinforcing the delight found in obedience.

way in all the world to live would be to live under the horrible restrictive constraints of the commands of God and the words of Christ but now you have found that his yoke is easy his burden is light there are some little gospel choruses that have a lot of good solid truth in them and there is one that takes those words of Jesus and captures them beautifully his yoke is easy his burden is light I found it so I have found it so he leadeth me by day and by night I found it so have you found it so can you say that once

47:34 - 48:18 Read in full sermon