Personal Holiness

Introduction and Preacher's Principles

0:01 As you know, Monday is a day when I like to have the opportunity to minister in chapel, and that continues to be the situation. However, over the last few Mondays, the Lord has sent us very special guests at Grace Community Church. And this is a somewhat unusual occurrence, I guess, to have so many in succession. But it is really marvelous how God has brought special servants to our church on the Lord's Day and then allowed them to stay over on Monday and minister to us.

0:38 We were so blessed the last couple of weeks, and we will be equally blessed today from God's choice servants. Some years ago, I came to be acquainted with the ministry of Reverend Albert Martin, who is pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey, which is in the New York area, about 30 minutes outside of New York. I came to be acquainted with his ministry through some of his tapes, and I think they must send out 40,000 or 50,000 of his tapes a year all across the country and around the world. He is especially enjoyed as a teacher of pastors.

1:15 Many pastors, many young men studying for the ministry, listen to his tapes and are greatly blessed. The Lord has given him unique abilities to delineate the principles of pastoral ministry and pastoral theology that has been a blessing to many of the young men studying for the pastorate in our own church and many other places. We had the privilege of having him with us yesterday to break open the Word of God, and I really didn't want him to come all the way from New Jersey and not have an opportunity to come to the Master's College and to share his heart and the Word of God with those who are a part of our family here. So it's with a great amount of joy that we welcome Al Martin.

1:55 I want you to know also he's married. He has three sons. He has a wife. He has a wife.

1:57 He has three children. I think their ages are 24, 21, and 20. Is that right? And we're grateful for his ministry not only in the church there for 23 years as a pastor of that same fellowship, but the ministry that God has given him in his family so that now, by God's grace, all of his children embrace the Lord Jesus Christ and are serving him in a biblical church.

2:21 We're grateful for that ministry in his life as well. Let's welcome him, Al Martin. God bless you, brother. To confession, even with Pastor John present, I confess I feel a lot more at home in this side's auditorium and looking into your faces than I did looking out over that sea of faces yesterday morning in great church.

2:54 And I trust that in the time allotted this morning, God will be pleased to bring his Word home to our hearts with clarity and with power. One of the things I always determined, after sitting where you sit as a student in two different Christian colleges, that if God ever gave me the opportunity to speak in the chapel sessions of Christian colleges, there were two things I would not do. Number one, I would not stand up and tell a lot of thin, corny, worn-out jokes to try to prove to the men and women of the college that I was a nice guy.

3:33 I used to sit disgusted right down to my boots when preachers would come and feel that the only way they could establish credibility was to tell some old, worn-out jokes that Johnny Carson had told years ago, and they went over like a lead balloon. So you're going to get no jokes from me. So if you think that the basis on which I must prove I'm a nice guy is to tell jokes, I'll just have to be in your doghouse, all right? Then the second thing I determined was this.

4:03 If I ever get a chance to speak in college chapels, I'm not going to assume everybody is in the same place. He is in the place where he already has little nubs sprouting angel's wings and assume that everything's all right simply because someone's in a Christian college. My soul used to be tormented nigh unto death when preachers would say, well, you're in this marvelous Christian college, and I know all of you. And I'd say, man, God isn't telling you that stuff.

4:31 I live with these young men and women. We need to have the hide preached off us, and you come in and stroke us. And I said, Lord, there are two things I'm never going to do if I ever get to preach in the college of Christian, the chapel of Christian colleges. I'm not going to tell jokes, and I'm not going to stroke people.

4:49 So I'm telling you on the outset I'm not here to stroke this morning. But I am here to bring the word of God, and I trust God by the Spirit will make that word effectual in each of our hearts. Now, I don't know if you as a student body are aware of the fact as yet that there is a special focus to the ministry in your chapel sessions during the month of November. There will be a series of messages dealing with what has been broadly entitled, The Master's Morality.

The Master's Morality: Foundational Presuppositions

5:22 And you will be receiving messages dealing with some of the burning moral and ethical issues that are going to scratch you where you itch. The matters of sexuality, music, drugs, the media, these issues are going to be addressed from this, chapel, platform, and pulpit in the coming Monday, Wednesday, and Friday chapel sessions here at the Master's College. Now, it has fallen to my lot to have the first message in this current series, and it's crucial that we begin where the Bible begins, in addressing all moral and ethical issues in the Christian community. Whenever matters of moral and ethical, religious concerns are addressed in the Christian community, there are certain fundamental presuppositions or foundational principles assumed in the community, and it is into that setting that these directives and norms are articulated. And I want to direct your attention to two groups of them this morning, as time permits, and then to make application of these things to your consciences. First of all, when the directives for ethical and moral issues come to the New Testament community,

6:49 they come with the assumption that those to whom these standards come are within the orbit of the dynamics of grace. Now, that's a mouthful, and I'll explain what I mean by it. When the epistles begin to treat sensitive moral and ethical issues, and they do treat them head on, flee fornication, lie not one to another, let him that stole steal no more, they deal with naughty ethical and moral issues, but when those norms are articulated to the New Covenant Christian community, there is an undergirding assumption, and the assumption is, first of all, that those standards come to people who are within the orbit of the dynamics of grace. And by the term, the dynamics of grace, I mean simply this. It is assumed that those norms are falling upon people who have become nothing less than new creatures in union with Christ Jesus. The familiar verse to all of us,

8:10 2 Corinthians 5.17, is true now as it was true then. If anyone, man or woman, boy or girl, of whatever background, whatever Christian or non-Christian influence, was impinging upon the early formative years, if anyone is in Christ, that is, a real Christian, if anyone is in vital life union with Jesus Christ, then nothing less constitutes being a true Christian. That's Paul's way of describing a Christian.

8:44 If anyone is in Christ, he is, not he ought to be, he may eventually become, it would be nice and desirable if he were, no such language is found in the Word of God. If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed. Eretz.

9:08 The definitive. There's been a shutting down of the old. And the things have become new. A perfect.

9:17 They have been introduced and remain and will continue to remain and develop until the new creature in Christ is found, perfected in the new heavens and the new earth, when the Lord brings about the consummation of all things. Now, by the dynamics of grace, that's what I'm talking about. That the ethical, moral norms of the New Testament come to people in whom it is assumed those dynamics of grace have already been operative. To state it a different way, the imperatives of New Testament conduct rest down upon the indicatives of New Testament experience. The imperatives of New Testament conduct. Of New Testament conduct, what we ought to be and to do, rest upon the foundation of the indicatives of New Testament experience. That is, what has already happened to us and what we have already become in virtue of our union with Christ.

Dynamics of Grace: Dominion of Sin Broken

10:34 Now, that's what I mean by that mouthful. That presupposition number one is the assumption that those to whom these standards come are truly within the orbit of the dynamics of grace. And let me just highlight three areas in which this is true. Number one, it is assumed that in all real Christians, the dominion or the lordship of sin has been broken through union with Christ.

11:09 If you have your Bibles, you can read this hymn on the Bible. It states that in the first chapter of Romans, Paul writes to the Roman Christians having extolled the grace of God in free justification, that is, that we are justified on the basis of the obedience of another and not our own obedience and where sin abounds, grace super abounds. Romans, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? If the mountain of sin is 10,000 feet high, and where sin abounds, grace superabounds, God's mountain of grace goes up to 15,000 feet, then the devil's logic is, let's raise a mountain of sin 50,000 feet so that we can have great mountain peaks of grace overshadowing it. If where sin abounds, grace superabounds, let's continue in sin to magnify grace. That's the devil's logic added to the doctrine of justification on the basis of the obedience of another. Paul responds by saying, God will give. And now he's going to show why that

12:34 cannot be so. Notice, we who died to sin. That's an indicative. That's not a command. It's not an exhortation.

12:44 It's not an entreaty. We who died to sin. How shall we any longer live therein? Or are you ignorant that all we who were indicative, baptized into Christ Jesus, all of us who have been vitally, spiritually united?

13:05 To Jesus Christ, if any man be in Christ, were baptized into his death. We were indicative, buried therefore with him through being placed into his death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk. And don't let anyone tell you this is all positional. Walk is not positional. It's experimental.

13:36 Don't let anyone try to please this passage of its experimental, practical, personal implications by saying that's all positional. You don't walk positionally. You walk experimentally, personally, practically, here and now, in the world in which you find yourself. That we might walk in newness of life. For if we become united with Him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this. Example is indet metrics. If we said, the Lord is the life of the creation, he might be like this. tobacco carry a bottle messages are also like this life is like this life is this, that our old man, indicative, was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away so that we should no longer be in bondage to sin. You see all the indicatives. He says

14:25 if we are so united to Christ by faith that his righteousness is now accounted ours, the same faith which united us to Christ, and in the virtue of that union we have a righteousness not our own, has also implanted us into the virtue and power of his death and resurrection so that a death and resurrection have occurred in our own personal spiritual experience. And that death and resurrection is the death to sin's dominion. And it is the resurrection to a life of righteousness. And it is not until verse 11 that we have an imperative. Even so, reckon you yourselves also to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus. Now the other entreaty, let not sin therefore reign in your bodies. Present

15:33 your members. You see the imperatives and the entreaties are founded upon the indicative of what is. It is assumed that in all real Christians, the dominion of sin has been broken through union with Christ. Verse 14, sin shall not exercise lordship over you. That's an indicative.

16:00 It's not an imperative. It's not an entreaty. It's not an entreaty. Exhortation, sin shall not exercise lordship over you. Why? For you are not under law, but under grace. He says if you come within the orbit of the operations and privileges of grace, the dominion of sin has been broken in your life. Now if words mean anything, that's what this passage is telling us. That sin's dominion has to be broken. That's what this passage is telling us. That sin's dominion has to be broken. That sin's dominion has to be broken. That sin's dominion has to be broken. That sin's been broken. And lest we miss the message, Paul goes on further, verse 17 in the same chapter, but thanks be to God that whereas you were the bondservants of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching whereunto you were delivered. It's interesting that conversion is here described as obedience from the heart to the form of teaching into which were cast. There is a gospel mold that comes in terms of the doctrine of the gospel. And when God by the Spirit effectually works in the sinner's heart, he is cast into that mold

17:19 of the gospel. And what's the result of it? Verse 18. And being made free from sin doesn't mean sinlessly perfect, as Romans 7 will go on to indicate. But being made free from sin in the sense of the whole preceding context, being made free from the dominion and the lordship of sin, you became the bond slaves of righteousness. Now that's not an exhortation. It's not an entreaty. He says it's a fact. You see it? And he says it's true of every single person. Every single Roman Christian. There was not a real Christian in the church of Rome who had not been made free from sin's dominion and had been brought under the lordship and the dominion of righteousness. Again, he repeats it in verse 22. But now being made free from

18:20 sin and become servants to God, not you ought to have, some may have, it is desirable, that you have, no indicatives. You are having your fruit unto sanctification and the end eternal life. Now can words be plain? As Paul writes, and particularly in chapters 12 to 16, bells out many dimensions of the master's morality as it impinges upon Roman Christians in a pagan society.

18:58 He writes, From the perspective that all of the real Christians at Rome had experienced this liberation from the dominion of sin and had come willingly and joyfully under the dominion of righteousness and of God.

Dynamics of Grace: Native Hatred of God Overcome

19:20 The second thing that is assumed within the dynamics of grace is this. It is assumed that in all real Christians, the native hatreds of the Christian faith are the result of the period of the nation's virginity. The first feminism of the Christian faith in Brazil. The native hatred of God andereeds.

20:02 ños. The maternal hatred of God and his law have even been overtaken in this recent evolution, by the regenerated grace and indwelling spirit of the Spirit of God. It's assumed that in all real Or we could back up to verse 5. For they that are after the flesh, those whose life is committed to the indulgence of natural, carnal, debased appetites, they that are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh.

20:22 They that are after the spirit, the things of the spirit. For the mind of the flesh is the loss of a few rewards. That's not what Paul says. The mind of the flesh is death.

20:33 This is a matter of life and death. But the mind of the spirit is life and peace because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God. It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be. Neither indeed can it be.

20:53 A man who has nothing but the mindset and the disposition of heart to God and His law that He brought with Him from His mother's womb can never truly be subject to God. Oh yes, like the Pharisees, He may render some external conformity. Jesus said you Pharisees are like whitewashed sepulchers. They appear beautiful to men, but are inwardly full of dead men's bones and all unclean.

21:21 You walk by A.B. Hinklestine's sepulcher the morning after he whitewashed it. And the morning sun is rising and it shines against it and you nudge your buddy and you say to him, Look at A.B.'s sepulcher, doesn't that look beautiful?

21:35 Oh yes! I just gave it a coat of whitewash yesterday. Well let's go over and look at it a little more closely. And so you go over and then you notice that the stone is loose.

21:45 It seals it and you pull it back a little bit and out comes a horrible stench of rotten flesh. That's the picture.

21:56 And it's possible to be like a beautiful whitewashed sepulcher outside, but inwardly to be full of unclean. But as far as keeping the law of God from the heart, longing that our thoughts and motives and intentions be conformed to the norms of God, Paul says the carnal mind is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be. Result? So then they that are in the flesh, those who've never been radically transformed out of the realm of the dominion of flesh, cannot please God.

22:34 But, but, indicative. You. You. Christians at Rome are not in the flesh, but in the spirit.

22:45 If so be that the spirit of God dwells in you. But if any man hath not the spirit of Christ, he is none of this. You see this close connection of reasoning? He says if all you have is what you brought with you from your mother's womb, you are in the realm of flesh.

23:06 And in that realm of flesh, you have a mindset that is enmity against God and his law. You cannot be subject to his law. Everything about you finds that the pressure of God's norms, that is the master's morality, rubs your fur the wrong way, galls your flesh, stirs up that enmity. And you say, who the hell is God to mess around with my sex life?

23:32 And that's what some of you will be saying when you hear the biblical standards about reality. Who in the hell is God to tell me what to do on my date? Who in the hell is God to tell me what I can and cannot do with my girlfriend's body? And that will be the language of your heart, if not the language of your lips.

23:54 Why? Because if all you have is what you brought with you from your mother's womb, it is enmity against God. It is not subject to him, neither indeed can it. And the more closely and carefully the master's morality is articulated, the more that enmity rises up within your breast in the form of a clenched fist.

24:17 And our only hope to be changed from that falsehood is this, that if the Spirit of God dwells in us, but you, Roman Christians, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that you are fully surrendered. No. If so be that you've had the second blessing. No.

24:35 If so be that you've had the... No.

24:37 If so be that the Spirit of God dwells in you. And he says, if the Spirit of God does not dwell in you, delivering you from that basic realm of commitment to the mindset of the flesh, you are none of him. Language again is plain. And therefore, when Paul writes about life in the Spirit, and gives norms for life in the Spirit, he's assuming that all real Christians have had that native hatred of God, and His law, overcome by the regenerating and indwelling grace of the Spirit.

The Christian's Commitment to Obedience

25:21 In every true Christian, the graphic description of Ezekiel the prophet has been fulfilled, in which God says, I will take out the heart of stone, I will give them a heart of flesh, I will place my Spirit within them, and I will cause them to walk in my statutes, and to speak my Word. God does a work that dethrones sin, and He does a work which excises this mindset of the flesh, and by the gift of His Spirit, then Philippians 2, verse 13 is realized, God works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. You see, that's why every description of a real Christian, in the New Testament, is a description of someone who has a fundamental commitment to a life of careful obedience to the Word of Christ. Now, hear me carefully. I'm not just mouthing preachers' talk, conscious that every idle word that anyone speaks will give account in the day of judgment.

26:37 I'm choosing my words carefully. Hear me now. It is everywhere assumed that every true Christian has a basic affinity for, love to, and submission to, the Word of Christ. Hear his words in the famous Eternal Security Passage, John 10, 27-29.

27:00 My sheep hear, present tense, my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, present tense, and I give unto them eternal life. And they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. Who has the right to say, that promise is mine, that I'm held in the hand of an omnipotent Christ, and folded over His hand is the hand of the Father? I and my Father are one.

27:37 None can pluck me out of His hand. Why, if only if I'm his sheep. How do I know if I'm his sheep? How do I know I'm not just a religious goat with a sign around my neck?

27:50 I belong to the flock of Jesus. Well, Jesus tells. He said His sheep are marked by two things. They are hearing my voice.

28:01 Not they heard it five, ten years ago and walked an aisle, raised a hand, prayed a prayer in the inquiry room. He says they are hearing my voice. Not just my voice when it says, my peace I give unto you, let not your heart be troubled. Not just my voice when it speaks comfort and promise, but my voice when it says, follow me.

28:28 If your right eye offend you, pluck it out. If your right hand offend you, cut it off and cast it from you. Calling us to radical discipleship, He says my sheep are hearing my voice and they do more than hear. He says they are following me.

28:44 They are following me. Not perfectly, but purposely. Oh yes, at times they follow with greater alacrity and speed and spontaneity than at other times. But the pattern of their life is they are following me and I give to them and to them alone eternal life.

29:04 I want to state it as bluntly as I know how. If you've been resting in a doctrine of eternal security that says because you made your decision and had a tingle up and down your version, you were to pray five years ago, you're fixed. No matter how you live, my friend, you're believing a lie and unless you relinquish it, you'll sink into hell with that lie. Now can I state it more bluntly than that?

29:29 Jesus said, not everyone who says unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that is doing the will of my Father which is in heaven. And there's going to be a lot of people who don't believe that. Because he says, Lord, Lord, surely I'm one of yours. I not only professed your name, I spoke it so well and with such articulation and convincingness that my church ordained me to preach.

30:00 Did we not prophesy in thy name? Then will I profess unto them, depart from me I never need. You who work in me. You see, the dominion of sin was never broken.

30:17 You were never brought out of the realm of commitment to the life, governed by the carnal mind. And he said, I don't care what your mouth says and your hands did, even of the miracles. Depart from me I never need. You see, the master's morality assumes that that basic hatred and rebellion against God and his law has been wonderfully subdued by the regenerating, indwelling grace of the Holy Spirit.

Dynamics of Grace: Attachment to the World Severed

30:54 Then there is a third, there is a third assumption under this first heading of the dynamics of grace. Not only that the dominion of sin has been broken, the antipathy to God's law overcome, but thirdly, it is assumed that in all real Christians, attachment to this present age with its values has been severed by the cross of Christ. It is assumed that in all real Christians, attachment to this present age with its values has been severed by the cross of Christ. Galatians 1 and verse 4. Paul referring to the death of Christ says these very pertinent words. Galatians 1 and verse 4. He says that our Lord Jesus gave himself for our sins in order that he might deliver us from hell when we die.

32:02 That's the only deliverance many evangelicals even think about. But that isn't what Paul wrote. He said that Christ gave himself for our sins in order that he might deliver us out of this present evil age according to the will of God, our God and our Father. Christ's death had one of its specific goals.

32:33 That all in whom that death was operative by way of a received forgiveness, it would have this power to sever their attachment to this present evil age and its values. Therefore it's not surprising in the last chapter of this same epistle to find Paul writing in this way. Galatians 6 verse 14. But far be it from me to glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ through which the world, this present age, this whole system with its commitment to live for time and the world of sense and the values that will pass in the final conflagration at the return of our Lord. He says through that cross of Christ, the world has been crucified unto me and I unto the world. What's he saying? He's saying simply this, that when you get a saving sight of Christ crucified, it will not only fill the soul with wonder that almighty God has provided a way of forgiveness and acceptance consistent with his justice and his holiness, but in that cross

34:01 there is such an open declaration of the absolute vanity of everything that men live for by nature that when you embrace that cross, the very cross that is the instrument of your salvation becomes the instrument of your severance from the world. Paul says through the cross the world is crucified to me. He's saying this present world with all of its tinsel, with all of its glitter, with all of its seductiveness, he said it has no more attraction for me than a cadaver hanging on the cross with a buzzard picking off its flesh. Now if you saw somebody walking up to a corpse hanging on a cross covered with swarming flies and a buzzard picking off its flesh and you saw someone embracing that cadaver amidst the flies and the vultures with a look of delight in his eyes, you'd say that guy is sick. He's a weirdo. He's a sicko. You see the picture?

35:12 The world is crucified to me. It was this present world system that put my Lord upon the cross. It was worldly wisdom and worldly evaluation of Christ and worldly standards. This is what crucified him and therefore in his crucifixion the world is unmasked for what it is.

35:33 The world, he says, has as much attraction for me as a cadaver upon the cross. And he says, by the way, the feeling's mutual. I have been crucified to the world. The world doesn't come up and stroke me any more than it comes up and strokes a cadaver on the cross.

35:49 That's why he said we're regarded as the off-scouring of all. We're counted as fools. And this whole notion that the way to win the world is to become so much like it that you can convince the world Christianity's not a bad option after all is entirely antithetical to the mind of the Word of God. What the Scripture teaches is this, that when the world sees people breathing the same air that it breathes, having to dress and clothe and go to work and go to school and do all the mundane things essential to sustaining life in this present age, when they see a man, a woman, young or old, of any age, living as it were in the same mundaneness in which they live and yet obviously, living with a set of values, living with a perspective, living with a vision and confidence of the future and therefore knowing what should be done now when there is that radical difference. It is then that the world says, what in God's name makes you people sick? And then you tell them that this is what Christ in grace does for poor people. You see, the assumption is when the Master's morality is articulated, it's coming to people in whom

37:16 this attachment to the world has been severed. Do you remember Paul's description of the Thessalonians' conversion? 1 Thessalonians 1, 9 and 10. They themselves report of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, how that you turned unto God from your idols.

37:36 That's the main verb. Then you have, oh, I think I said participle last night. That was a boo-boo. You have two infinities.

37:44 You turn to do what? To serve this God and to wait for His Son from heaven whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. What happened to the Thessalonians when they came within the orbit of the dynamics of grace? Their attachment to this present world was radically severed on the threshold.

38:10 Not sometime later at a meeting to enter the deeper life, not at a series of consecration meetings, no. He said on the threshold, you turned unto God from your idols with a disposition to serve this living God as opposed to your dead idols, and with a heart fixed upon that glorious consummating grace that will be brought at the coming of the Lord Jesus, never forgetting that He loves you to the point of taking the wrath you deserve. It is Christ raised from the dead delivering us from the wrath to come. Now do you see why John says in 1 John 2, 15 and 16, Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. Now follow closely. If any man loves the world, if his heart is fundamentally, basically attached to the world, what does John say? The love of the Father is not in him.

39:16 Now he doesn't say it's in him but squelched. It's in him but restrained. It's in him but smothered. My friend, don't play with God's words.

39:28 We say we believe in plenary verbal inspiration. Are you prepared to put your professed experience up to that inspired word which says if you are committed to the love of this world, its goals, its standards, its norms, its attitudes to music, to sex, to the sanctity of sexual identity, what is maleness, what is femaleness, God's assigned roles for men and women. If you're not prepared to let mind and life be governed by the standards that come from heaven, if you are conformed to this present age, Scripture says the love of the Father is not in you. I didn't say it. You can go out of here and say, that preacher is off the wall and crazy. But you won't change what God wrote.

40:24 The love of the Father is not in you. And you can go back to the dorm and have a little bull session and say that's all you heard from this pulpit this morning was bull. But it won't change what God says. The love of the Father isn't in you if you're still in a love affair with this present world.

Motives of Grace: Love, Gratitude, and Fear of God

40:44 And everything that comes in the way of the Master's morality assumes the people have experienced the dynamics of grace. Then I must hasten to the second category and I can only give you the heading. You've been so attentive that you've drawn much more of the preacher out of me and I hope to be more of a teacher this morning. So it's your fault that I can't get through my sermon.

41:05 That's the truth. People are more than half the making of a preacher. And I do appreciate the attentiveness that's drawn out my own heart as I sought to deliver my soul to you this morning. The second thing that the New Testament writers could assume was this.

41:24 That not only were the recipients of their letters giving them moral and ethical directives along with doctrinal instructions. Not only did they assume that they had experienced the dynamics of grace but they assumed that they were under the control and constraints of the motives of grace. Not only within the orbit of the power the dynamics of grace but that they were also under the constraints of the motives of grace. And what do I mean by that?

41:59 Simply this. When they appeal to them to do certain things to be certain things not to do certain things the leverage that they feel is most powerful is not the leverage of threatened punishment not the leverage of hoped for reward though both of those are subdominant emphases even in the epoch of the full revelation of the grace of God in Christ knowing the feel of the Lord who persuades men. But the major leverage used again and again is the leverage of the motives of grace. They assume that when the master's morality comes to the Christian community and they want to move them in the direction of that morality they take out their biggest lever and the lever is the motives of grace. For example, Paul is going to begin his intensely practical section in Romans. Not that the rest is not practical this is more intensely practical and ethical. Romans 12.

43:10 How does he start? I beseech you. He doesn't say I command you. He's so confident in the motives of grace that he scoots to the place of entreaty and he doesn't even use an imperative.

43:22 I beseech you by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice, etc. You see what he says? I take the leverage of God's mercies revealed in the gospel. Mercies that have come revealing a righteousness an alien righteousness for all believing sinners.

43:45 A righteousness that breaks the dominion of sin. A righteousness that comes in the way of God's sovereign electing love and he says oh Christian community there at Rome I beseech you with this great lever of the mercies of God to present your bodies be not conformed but be transformed, etc. He's convinced that in the hearts of those people the reflection upon the mercies of God will make them pliable and moldable and responsive to the Master's morality. Or take for example the motive of love to the Son of God as a beautiful statement in 1 Peter 1.8 Peter can say whom having not seen he loves in whom believing you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. He assumes that every believing soul is a loving soul. And what more powerful motive to obedience is there than love?

44:51 Did not Jesus say if you love me you will keep my commandments? He that hath my commandments and keepeth them he it is that loveth me. There is this attachment to the person of Christ not in a woozy ethereal kind of undefined love. But a principled commitment to do his will out of gratitude for the fact that he gives the Father's will even to bearing my sin in his own body up to the tree and be made a curse for me.

45:18 This is why the scripture says we love him because he first loved us. The assumption is if I have embraced his love to me he will love me and love me and love me and love me and love me and love me and love me and love me and love me and love me and love me and love me and love me then my heart has reciprocated in love to him. And so strong is that conviction. Paul actually pronounces a strange curse at the end of 1 Corinthians 16 in verse 22 If anyone loves not our Lord Jesus Christ let him be accursed of God.

45:58 Isn't that an amazing thing? If anyone is not attached in deep fondness to our Lord assuming that every real Christian there at Corinth is moved by the motive of love. And then the other motive I don't have time to enlarge is that of the non-legal fear of God. The fear of God in the sense that knowing his smile is life's greatest pleasure, incurring his frown is life's greatest dread.

46:30 And I challenge you to take your concordance and see how many times the fear of God is a dominant motive in New Testament ethics. 2 Corinthians 7, 1, Having therefore these promises dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves of all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. If you pass the time of your sojourning here, he says, as one who calls upon the Father, who judges without respect of persons, pass it in faith, knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things.

Call to Conversion and Growth in Grace

47:15 Let me ask you in closing, do you know anything of these dynamics of grace? And of these motives of grace?

47:25 You say, preacher, to be honest with you, I don't have a clue what you're talking about. I accepted Christ, made my decision, lived a relatively respectable life. I thought that's all there was to it. Well, my friend, what you thought is not the nature of reality.

47:42 And if you've sat here this morning, and you said, oh God, oh God, if what that preacher's saying is true, and it seems that you've not been twisting your word, I've seen it with my own eyeballs in your word. Oh God, I don't know anything of what it is to be within the orbit of grace that has broken sin's dominion, that has made me love the law of the God who made me, that has severed me from this present evil age. I don't know what it is to be moved by the motive of thankfulness for mercy, to be loved to Christ and filial fear of God. What do I need?

48:19 My friend, you need to be converted. You need to be saved. You need to become a biblical Christian. You need to get into the way of true repentance and faith.

48:31 You need to cry to God that he'd have mercy upon you, and that you would be united to his own beloved son. And for you who can say, thank God, though I never heard it put in quite those terms before, Lord, that is true of me. You did put me in the orbit of grace. Now I know what happened.

48:52 That's why I no longer felt comfortable with my old companions and standards and ambitions and perspectives. Lord, you broke sin's dominion. Lord, by your grace, you subdued my rebel heart. By your grace, you fixed my heart upon the world's cup.

49:09 Now I see why when I read your word, your mercies melt me. And cause me to want to obey you. When I think of the Lord Jesus, my heart runs out in love, and I want to please him. And, oh, God, in the light of all you've done, I want to walk in your field.

49:26 I want to honor you. My Christian friend, if those things are true of you, cry to God that the same grace that's implanted in them will cause them to be augmented and developed and flourish in your soul. For only as the dynamic, the dynamics of grace, and the motives of grace flourish in the soul, will the Master's morality be a delight to you as a Christian. Let us pray.

Closing Prayer and Reinforcement

50:02 Our Father, how we give you thanks for your word. Oh, we bless you that you've not been left to wander in the never-never land of our own notion. We're not at the mercy of this world's guru to know what truth and reality are. For we thank you for a word from heaven, settled and fixed.

50:27 We pray that the Holy Spirit will sing that word to every heart gathered in this place this morning. Thank you for your presence. Thank you for giving to these men and women an attentive ear to your word this morning. Oh, God, may that word not return to you always, but may it prosper in the very things whereunto you have sent.

50:54 For the sake of Christ, we please you. Amen.

MacArthur's Personal Testimony and Final Prayer

51:10 There is nothing to add to that message, obviously, and I would not attempt to do that, but to give you a sort of personal experience with the same approach to truth. I was sharing with Pastor Martin last night that I was invited to the philosophy class at Cal State Northridge, and the professor, who is an unbeliever, in fact, formerly a Jewish rabbi, said, I want you to talk on New Testament morality. I want you to present New Testament Christian morality. To go into a secular classroom, a philosophy class, upper division, on a college campus, and call everyone to New Testament morality would be absolutely ridiculous. So I simply began by saying, at the very outset, I want you to know that I would not expect any of you to be at all interested in this morality. I do not expect that you will desire to live this morality. In fact, you will be offended by everything I say.

52:22 The reason I said that is because that's exactly true. You see, there at Enmei was God. There in the circle of the carnal mind. Everything about righteousness offends them.

52:34 And so I said, I don't expect that any of you should even be interested. And one young man raised his hand and said, well, why not? And I said, because you don't have a personal relationship with the living God through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and you do not love God with all your heart. And you do not, at the deepest point of your being, long to fulfill the law of God.

52:56 To which he replied, well, how can I have that? To which I replied, now we're down to my subject. And we spent the rest of the time, except for the last ten minutes, presenting Jesus Christ, and before the class was over and dismissed, there were, by God's grace, two young people who came to Christ. And then, as a result of that, there was in their hearts the desire to be what God wanted them to be.

53:25 And I only say that so that, in some small way, I can reinforce the fact that this is the truth of God as we need to hear it. We thank you for being God's servants today. Let's stand for a closing prayer. We bless your name, Lord, for the clarity of your word, for the gift of your servant this day.

53:53 And, oh Lord, we can only pray that you would work your work of prayer in every heart. That there would be no one here who would be outside that sphere of grace, who would miss that hard attitude of Paul when he says from the inner man, I delight in your law. The heart of David who says, oh, how I love thy law. May it be that obedience for us is the highest joy because of our love for you.

54:35 Because of our gratitude for the mercies of God. Because of that wholesome and wondrous awe that we have for one so glorious as you are. Bless this day and make it a fruitful day in every life. And we'll praise you in Christ's name and everyone's name.

54:54 Amen. Have a great day.