Nature

The point: Guard against any teaching that blurs Christ's unique eternal sonship into a generic sonship shared with believers; that is blasphemy, not devotion.

Our Lord said 'I ascend to my Father and your Father' - carefully keeping the inter-Trinitarian fatherhood of the Son distinct from the adoptive fatherhood of believers. He is never recorded saying 'our Father' with his disciples in the sense of shared sonship.

I ascend to my God and your God, my Father and your Father. It is the same person, but the relationship is not identical. Now why do I underscore this? Well, for the simple reason that some have construed the doctrine of adoption as being a doctrine which teaches that we are incorporated into a relationship that in many respects is identical to that which Jesus Christ bears to His own Father in the uniqueness of inter-Trinitarian relationships.

12:08 - 12:50 Read in full sermon

Driving home: There is not one clear text from Genesis to Revelation which states that God is a Father to His creatures simply because He is their Creator.

If we are the product of God's creative activity, then creating something ourselves and calling it God is as absurd as a grandchild calling itself the grandpa. Martin uses it to show how Paul's 'offspring of God' in Acts 17 exposes the stupidity of idolatry.

If we are the product of God's creative activity, how can we create something and then call that God? That's like the grandchild calling itself the grandpa.

17:42 - 17:53 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not let the 'universal fatherhood' rhetoric of cultural or religious leaders cloud the clear biblical teaching that by nature we are not God's children.

Critics of hell say, 'What father would put his own child in a thumbscrew and tighten it down while the child wiggles and screams?' Martin exposes how this argument only works if you have already assumed the unbiblical doctrine of universal fatherhood by creation.

Well, for the simple reason that there are multitudes who live under the delusion that since God is the Father of all His creatures, what father would ever take one of his own children and put his thumbs in a thumbscrew and start tightening down that thumbscrew and watch his child wiggle and squirm and scream in agony and then continue to tighten them down and tighten them. What father would do that? And everyone says well of course no father would Only a tyrant would Well they say how could a loving father take any of his children and put them in a burning hell

20:15 - 21:00 Read in full sermon

The point: When reading 'Israel is my son' in the Old Testament, remember it was an adoption unto theocratic privilege, not an adoption unto saving sonship.

Galatians 3-4 pictures Old Testament believers as children still in their legal minority, kept under a strict tutor, not yet come to the full privileges of adoption. At the coming of Christ and the descent of the Spirit, believers immediately pass into full-grown adult sonship.

He says even the true people of God in that old economy were not like children come to age. They were like children who were still in their minority. They were not of legal age. And so they were under a strict master.

28:46 - 29:02 Read in full sermon

The point: Examine whether you are still content in the household of the devil, with your own will governing and the world predominating; if so, you will remain in that family.

By nature every sinner belongs to a household where his own will governs, the flesh rules, the world predominates, and Satan himself is head of the family. Adoption is the summons to renounce allegiance to that foul head and enter into the family of God.

Are you prepared to renounce the patterns and the vision and concerns of the household in which you now are? A household in which your own will governs, in which the flesh rules, in which the world is the predominating influence, and Satan, your father, is himself the head of the household. Are you weary of all of that? Or is it still your delight to be a member of that household?

34:55 - 35:25 Read in full sermon

The point: Recognize that the wheels of your obedience will turn with new zeal and fervour only as you live in the light of your privileges as a son or daughter of God.

If adoption is the pinnacle of gospel privilege, and if the most powerful motives to holiness are gospel motives, then the devil's most devastating strategy is to obscure adoption - which explains why so few theologians even treat it as a separate doctrine.

You see, the conviction has been deepening in my own heart, in my hours of preparation, that if adoption is the pinnacle of gospel privilege, and it is, and if the most powerful motives to holiness and service are gospel motives, and they are, if you were the devil wanting to cripple God's people, to keep them back from their most zealous service and their most fervent love to God, what doctrine would you seek to obscure more than any other?

36:45 - 37:23 Read in full sermon