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(b): Seek to Immitate Our Heavenly Father

Pastor Albert N. Martin expounds Matthew 5:43-48 and Ephesians 5:1, arguing that adopted children of God have a solemn duty to imitate their Heavenly Father. This imitation is appropriate to them as creatures made and remade in God's image, and it is to be pursued by beholding God's works in providence and grace, meditating on His character traits, and supremely, by imitating the perfect representation of the Father, Jesus Christ. Martin challenges believers to embrace this duty with gratitude and warns unbelievers of God's impending judgment.

1 illustration in this sermon

Biblical Basis for Affirming This Duty: Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3
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Mimicking Dad's Walk

In this part of the sermon: The sermon continues to build the biblical basis with Ephesians 5:1, 'Be therefore imitators of God as beloved children,' and Colossians 3:9-10, which speaks of putting on the…

Martin shares a personal anecdote from his boyhood about practicing to mimic his father's distinctive walk, illustrating the natural desire of a son to be like his dad, which Paul then fastens upon in the spiritual realm for imitating God.

Because you are to be imitators of God as beloved children. I can remember as a boy back in Stamford, Connecticut, when my dad would come home, we were six, seven years during the war when we had no car, and my dad would walk down Soundview Avenue in Stamford, Connecticut, there was a place where the street had a bend in it, and once he came around that bend you could see him about 200 yards away, and my dad had a funny movement where when he walked his right leg kind of swung out a little bit. As a son, you know what I used to practice? How am I going to mimic my dad? And so I'd practice swin...

27:50 - 28:55 Read in full sermon