Gethsemane

Continuing the witness of the Gospels to Christ's true humanity, Pastor Martin walks through evidence that Jesus possessed a true human body that hungered, thirsted, grew weary, slept, was strengthened, and ultimately could die. He then turns to the reality of a true human soul, showing it in genuine temptation in the wilderness and in a life of dependent prayer climaxing in Gethsemane. The sermon insists that without a real body and a real soul there is no real Savior, and that the person and work of Christ stand or fall together.

Pastor Martin completes the witness of the Gospels to Christ's true human soul by tracing the actings of his human mind and emotions. Using the analogy of assembling a model from every piece in the box, he insists evangelicals must include the Gospel data showing Jesus learned, reasoned, was ignorant of certain things, and felt the full sinless range of joy, sorrow, anger, zeal, agitation, indignation, and grief. He then applies this with reference to Christ as our sinless Savior and our perfect emotional and mental pattern, urging believers to abandon both stoic restraint and unbridled passion in favor of Christ-shaped humanness.

Returning to the cardinal blessings after a two-month digression, Pastor Martin moves from the legal to the experiential privileges of adoption and expounds the first and chief one: the gift of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of adoption. Working through Galatians 4:4-6 and Romans 8:12-26, he shows that Christ was sent precisely to secure sonship, that the Spirit is freely given to every adopted child, and that the Spirit's primary work in adoption is to impart a filial disposition expressed in the cry 'Abba, Father.' He guards the witness of the Spirit from both dead orthodoxy and fanatical subjectivism, insisting it is never independent of the Word and the other fruits of the Spirit.