I Am The Way (radio broadcast)

The point: Proclaim the gospel with the prayer and expectation that God will make it the power of God unto salvation.

The series title uses Bunyan's 'Celestial City' as a metaphor for heaven, and 'signposts' for clear gospel texts, illustrating the sermon's purpose to guide people to salvation.

Now I wish to begin this evening a relatively brief series of messages entitled Simple Signpost to the Celestial City.

0:00 - 0:12 Read in full sermon

Driving home: There is only one door, one bridge, one ladder between earth and heaven, the crucified Son of God. Whosoever will enter in by that door may be saved but to him who refuses to use that door, the Bible holds out no hope at…

Martin quotes Bishop Ryle at length to underscore the sermon's point about the exclusivity of Christ for salvation, emphasizing that no human merit can substitute for Christ's atonement.

Listen to old Bishop Ryle, how the old Bishop could hit the nail on the head in some of his comments on gospel portions. Commenting on this very text, the old Bishop said, we should mark in these verses how expressly the Lord Jesus shuts out all ways of salvation but himself. He declares, no man comes unto the Father but by me. It avails nothing that a man is clever, learned, highly gifted, amiable, charitable, kind-hearted and zealous about some sort of religion.

14:42 - 15:20 Read in full sermon

The point: Come to the conviction that your own condition is such that you can have no safe dealings with God apart from Jesus Christ.

Martin asks listeners to imagine a private, intense interview with him, sitting three feet away, to personalize the searching questions and impress their gravity.

Having looked at this text under the two headings, first of all the heading of the amazing personal claims of Jesus Christ, secondly the sobering conclusion drawn from these claims of Christ, now thirdly and finally, I want to give you some searching personal questions based upon Jesus' claims and his own conclusion. I want you to envision that we dismiss the whole congregation and set up appointments that they had to go through the next three to four days and each one of us were able to go into the back room where the elders meet for prayer and you were sitting down three feet away and no one...

16:57 - 17:59 Read in full sermon

The point: Embrace Jesus as the one whose truth makes free and liberates from the tyranny of men's silly notions about life, death, and what lies beyond the grave.

Martin compares all the theorizing of philosophers about life and death to 'a dung heap of human ignorance' to highlight the absolute and singular truth found in Christ.

Take all of the theorizing of the most profound, insightful, intellectual philosophers of all the ages and on the most simple issues that a little child asks, Mommy, what happens when I die? Where do I go? And take all that the philosophers have said and pile it up, and it's nothing more than a dung heap of human ignorance. A dung heap of human ignorance!

23:30 - 23:58 Read in full sermon

The point: Know what it is to have Christ as your life, loving the Father's face, fellowship, and rules, having passed from death unto life.

The parable of the prodigal son is used to illustrate what it means to pass from spiritual death to life, characterized by renewed communion and delight in the Father.

Do you know what it is to say I once was dead? As the father said of the prodigal, this my son was dead, but now is alive. He was dead in terms of communion with his father, dead in terms of delight in his father's presence, in his father's ways, in his father's rules. But when he came back with the disposition of desire to see his father's face and live in his father's presence and live under his father's government, the father says, my son was dead and is now alive.

24:54 - 25:28 Read in full sermon