Concise Definition; Apostolic Testimony to Deity, Part 1

Martin pictures a man whose neighbor each year plants shrubs a little further onto his property — until finally he calls in the surveyors to mark the line. So the church called in surveyors (theologians) only when heretics encroached on Christ's deity.

until his neighbor begins to encroach upon his property. And each year the neighbor plants a few more shrubs a little bit further away from what he knew was the border until finally, in desperation, He hires the services of a surveyor, and the exact lines and angles and dimensions of his land are so clearly defined that he can go to his neighbor and say, You come one half an inch beyond that stake, and you're on my territory. Now get off. Now that's precisely what happened in the history of the Christian church.

9:12 - 9:41 Read in full sermon

Martin notes the catechism's careful 'two distinct natures' is not theological flourish but a phrase designed to 'shoot the heresy of mixed natures right between the eyes.'

You wonder where that old phrase came from? it was to knock that heresy right in the head and shoot it between the eyeballs.

16:42 - 16:47 Read in full sermon

Driving home: If you want a salvation with no mystery, then you'll go to hell seeking to create your own.

If you want a salvation with no mystery, you'll go to hell trying to create your own — God's salvation comes wrapped in a cloud of mystery, not gobbledygook.

that we might be so savingly united to Him as to share in all the virtue of His salvation. My friend, if you want a salvation with no mystery, then you'll go to hell seeking to create it. If you want a faith with no mystery, concoct your own, but you'll perish with it. The glory of the Christian is that he worships in a cloud of mystery.

19:08 - 19:33 Read in full sermon

The point: Treat the historic confessions (Westminster, London, Chalcedon, Athanasian Creed) not as relics but as the fruit of the church's careful surveying of biblical territory — use them.

Christ tells Nicodemus 'no man hath ascended... save the Son of Man which is in heaven' — He is talking to him on earth and is in heaven simultaneously. Two natures.

But of the same Son of Man we read in John this morning He was in heaven while He was talking to Nicodemus. Now you make sense out of that. Any other way than that He's God He is man two distinct natures in the one person forever. And when He says the Son of Man knows not the time of His coming that is an aspect of His humanity.

25:17 - 25:38 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The Word was God, and there can be in the Greek language no more emphatic assertion of the essential deity of the second person of the Godhead.

Martin's grammatical illustration of Greek emphasis: the unusual English word order 'brilliant, brilliant he was' captures how John throws 'God' forward in 'and God was the Word' for emphasis.

We don't do it as often. But someone might say, what about such and such a person who was over to visit you? You say, well, after talking, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant that man is. And what you do, and rather than using the normal form of conversation, where you say, well, he was brilliant, or he appeared brilliant, you throw the word brilliant forward for emphasis.

35:25 - 35:44 Read in full sermon

The point: When a denier of Christ's deity offers an alternative reading of a text, refuse to grant their framework — one clear witness is enough.

If someone claimed no human is more than 6'6", how many seven-footers would you need to disprove him? One. So with Christ's deity — one clear text is enough.

All you need to prove him wrong is to have one text, one bona fide witness. I asked the kids at the table this morning. They gave me some fuel for this. I said, suppose someone went stalking through the land saying, no human being is more than six feet six inches tall.

42:50 - 43:02 Read in full sermon

Some translators turn Romans 9:5 into a doxology to the Father — but Paul never breaks into eulogy in the middle of a heartbreak over Israel's unbelief. The verse is about Christ.

Where in the world does Paul ever give a eulogy in the midst of pouring out his broken heart because of the unbelief and impenitence of sinners?

46:47 - 46:55 Read in full sermon

The point: Recognize that when the gospel is preached, it is Christ as God who speaks — refusing the gospel is refusing the God who will judge you.

Martin laments preachers who 'huckster off the Son of God as a cheap panacea for all of the carnal itches of wicked men' — a vivid rebuke of casual contemporary evangelism.

This is the great tragedy of so much of contemporary gospel preaching that would huckster off the Son of God as some kind of a cheap panacea for all of the carnal itches of wicked men.

53:45 - 54:03 Read in full sermon