Christmas Service: "God's Great Christmas Gift" (Galatians 4:4-7)

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Galatians end chapter number four. Galatians chapter number four. I'm just going to read four verses.
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Galatians chapter four and verses four through to seven.
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Galatians four, four through seven. Galatians four, four through seven. God's Bethesda asks that when the time came to completion
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God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.
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And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts crying, Abba, father.
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So you are no longer a slave but a son. And if a son, then
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God has made you an heir. Pray that God will bless that reading of his word and give us understanding of it.
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As we come to it, let's pray and ask for his help and then we'll spend just a few moments thinking about this passage.
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Well, Heavenly Father, we ask that as we come to this passage and we come to what it has to teach us about this season which we celebrate, pray that even in this time your spirit would be at work using the simple message of your word to open our eyes to see wonderful things.
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We ask all this in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. Well, I don't know your experience with Christmas gifts.
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I personally think all Christmas gifts land in one or two categories, things that are useful and things that are useless.
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And there is very rarely, let's be honest, there's very rarely a middle ground in between. You usually get a gift that's actually great and useful and you sometimes get a gift you're like,
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I really don't need this. I forget the number now, but it's something in the hundreds of millions of dollars
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I spend every year in returning gifts on Amazon. In fact, they've made it so easy now that when your gift comes, they include a little note.
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All you have to do is scan the little QR code. Person doesn't even need to know you returned it.
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And they'll either, you know, give the money back to them or they'll give the money to you in Amazon credit and you go use it for what you want.
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I won't say how many times I've used that over the years, but let's just say I'm very well versed in that system. The reality is we all know what it is to be given gifts that we neither want nor need.
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We all know that there's an awkwardness that comes with that because you can't really go to the person who gave you the gift and say, yeah,
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I don't need this. That's just maybe not the most polite thing to do. So you can't really do that. So what do you do when you get a gift that you can't use or need?
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Well, I'm not going to embarrass anyone. Actually, there's no one in this room who's given me a gift I didn't need, thankfully. But we all know people who have given us useless and pointless gifts.
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But the reality is unlike useless and pointless gifts, for a few moments, I want to talk to you about a gift that God has given that is neither useless nor pointless, that actually is the best possible gift that He could give.
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We are in Galatians chapter 4. We're actually parachuting right into the context of Galatians itself. This is a letter that's written by the
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Apostle Paul, and he writes this letter to an area, actually, not just to one church, to an area, to a region of churches, and these churches have unfortunately started to lose their grip on the good news of the gospel.
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And as they're losing their grip on the good news of the gospel, Paul writes this letter to basically remind them, this is the gospel
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I preach to you. Please, if you wouldn't mind, get back to it. And as he comes to chapter 4, he's starting to turn the page a little bit.
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For much of this letter, he's been very to the matter, he's been very factual, he's been very doctrinal in his approach as you come to this letter.
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But as you come to Galatians chapter 4, he's beginning to turn the curve a little bit and deal more with the experience of these
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Christians. But before he can even get to that, he has to ground that reality in some basic truths.
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And that's, it's those basic truths that I want us to consider for a verses 4 through 7.
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Because in this passage, Paul is going to remind them of the gift of God that came in the person of the
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Lord Jesus, a gift that never becomes useless, a gift that can truly change your life.
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And the reason it can do that is because this gift, unlike any other gift, well, in a sense, all gifts originated from God, but there's something about this particular gift that originates in the heart and the mind of God himself and not man.
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And so for a few moments, I want us to consider that great and precious gift that God gave us in the person of the
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Son. And I want to consider this under a few headings. First with me, I want you to consider that God's gift came at the right time.
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God's gift came at the right time. So do you see how this passage begins?
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Verse 4, when the time came to completion, I grew up on the
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King James Bible. In the King James Bible, it says, in the fullness of time, in the fullness of time, when the time had come to its completion,
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God sent his Son. Well, the question is, well, the time for what?
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Well, I think the clue actually comes to us in the context. Hopefully you've got Galatians 4 open in front of you.
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Look at verse 1. Paul says, now I say that as long as the heir is a child, he differs in no way from a slave, though he, excuse me, is owner of everything.
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Instead, he is under guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. In the same way when we were children, we were in slavery under the elements of the world.
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And then he comes to verse 4, when the time came to completion, the time for what?
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Well, the time for us to no longer be under guardians and trustees, for us to be under the law.
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When that time came to completion, God sent his
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Son. It's interesting that he ties this in verse 3 to the fact that because all mankind has failed to keep
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God's law, all mankind is basically under slavery. That all mankind is bound by the fact that they are unable to keep
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God's law. And as a result, they are in slavery to sin, they're in slavery to the devil, and even in slavery to their own flesh.
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The reality is, I say this often, but our world likes to vaunt how free it is, allegedly.
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We are very good at pounding our chests, I hate to say, especially in this country. Part of the lore and legend of this country is its freedom from an oppressive power.
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Yes, they were oppressive at that point. But the reality is we can sometimes have this idea that we are free people, and that means what exactly?
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Because I would put it to you that actually the Bible's understanding is that the only genuinely free people are those who are freed from sin.
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In fact, Jesus said, John 834, that everyone who commits sin is a slave.
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I believe he was that great urban philosopher, Bob Dylan. I believe
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Bob Dylan had a song, you could be a general or a private, you could be a rich man or a poor one.
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But how does that song go? You've got to serve somebody. There's an element of truth to that statement.
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Actually, I think it's one of the best Bob Dylan songs. Bob Dylan wrote a lot of good songs, actually. But that's one of his better ones, especially.
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Because the reality is, if you're a human being, if you are a human being, you will serve somebody.
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And the question is, who will you serve? Well, for all of mankind outside of Jesus Christ, mankind is in slavery to sin.
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But there was a point in time where God had said, okay, enough is enough of that. I am stepping in.
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And so the text is that when the time came to completion, God sent his son.
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The law had accomplished its purpose of revealing who God is and exposing our need for a savior.
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And when that time had come to an end, the Bible says that God sent his son.
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God's gift arrived at the right time. But not only did it arrive at the right time, secondly, I'll have you know that it came in the right form, that it came in the right form.
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Because again, look at our passage. It says that when the time came to completion and the fullness of time,
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God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law.
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It's interesting that God's answer to the problem of sin and the problem of our failure to keep his law was not to send an angel.
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It was not some huge cosmic event. It was not sending another prophet.
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I mean, he had sent lots of prophets up to this point, but all the prophets he had sent were pointing to the fact that there was one who would come.
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And yet the ones who were sent weren't the one who was coming. He didn't even just make a huge cosmic amnesty in the sky.
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He didn't just, as it were, unfold a massive scroll over the earth and just announce forgiveness is here.
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Don't worry about it. No, God's way of dealing with the problem was, you see that in the text, says that God sent his son.
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That God gave the most precious, it feels sacrilegious to call him a thing, but English fails me at this point.
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But he sends his son the best that he has. And note what
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Paul says about this son that's sent. He highlights two key aspects of who this son is.
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He says that God sent his son. He says two things about him. Did you notice that in verse four?
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It says that he was born of a woman and he was born under the law.
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Born of a woman. That's the first major thing that Paul notes for us. And that's just simply pointing to the fact that he was virgin born.
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That unlike the rest of humanity, where your parents came together and when they came together, they both contributed something for you to be here.
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I would comment on our society where increasingly you hear people say, we don't need men. But you needed men to get here though.
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But that's a conversation for another time. Let me just simply note that every human being is a product of a man and a woman coming together.
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But Jesus wasn't. The son who came was the only one of whom it could be said he was born purely of a woman.
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Going all the way back to Genesis chapter three where God had said that he would send a seed, a offspring that would come from the woman.
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And through that one, the problem of sin would be dealt with. Well, Paul very cleverly connects the son to that promise and says that the son is born of a woman.
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But he doesn't just say he's born of a woman. That is absolutely true. In fact, we read that in Isaiah chapter seven.
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But notice what else he says, born of a woman, born under the law, born under the law.
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What does Paul mean by that? Well, you've got to consider this in the light of this book. One of the big problems that these churches in this region were facing was an incorrect understanding of the relationship between God's law and God's good news.
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They were thinking that, well, they were being told, I should say, that if you keep
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God's law, you can earn for yourself a salvation that sticks.
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And Paul's basically saying, oh, no, no, no, in this letter. Actually, that isn't how that works. The only salvation that sticks is the one that comes through the son.
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But to make the point that the law is important, I think that's why Paul says here that he was born under the law, that he was born under the obligation that all of us are born under to keep
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God's law perfectly. Our fathers in the faith used to put it like this. They said that God demanded of us perfect, exact, entire, and perpetual obedience.
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Perfect, not 99 .95, 100%. Exact, the very things that he asked of us.
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Entire, all of the things that he asked of us, and perpetual. You can't say, well, I obeyed yesterday.
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That's good enough. Nope. Gotta obey yesterday, today, and pretty much till the end. None of us can do that.
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But the beautiful thing is that Christ comes into the world under that exact obligation. And where every single one of us has failed, he gloriously and perfectly succeeds.
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That he rendered to the father perfect worship. That he offered to God complete reverence, even unto the end.
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That even at the level of his affections and his desires as a man, that they were submitted fully to the father.
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So Paul can say that the son that God has sent was born of a woman. He was born of a virgin.
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And by the way, that means he didn't have original sin the way that we all do. And he was born under the law.
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He rendered to God perfect obedience. Succeeding where we had failed.
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And so God sends his son at the right time. He comes in the right form. And I know with you very quickly that he also sends his son who meets the right needs.
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That he sends his son who meets the right needs. So again, look at this passage.
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Now we're in verse 5. Why does he send the son? Verse 5, to redeem those under the law.
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So that we might receive adoption as sons. Two reasons that he gives. A negative and a positive.
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In the negative, the son comes to redeem those who were under the law. We were in slavery because of our failure to keep the law.
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But here's what happens. Christ comes in, sees us in that state and says, no, I will pay the price to free them from their sin.
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This language of redemption goes all the way back to the Exodus. That great event where God delivered his people from slavery in Egypt and brought them into freedom out of their slavery.
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And Paul picks up that language and says that we were enslaved to sin. Not much different to the children of Israel being enslaved to Egypt.
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But God did a mighty thing just like he did in the Exodus. He did a mighty thing in bringing us out of that slavery.
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And how did he do it? By paying a price. That's what that word redeemed means here in this passage. It means to pay the price to free someone out of their slavery.
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Jesus' perfect life, that life of obedience culminated in the greatest act of obedience.
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He went to the cross and as he goes to the cross, that perfect life and that satisfying death combined together to enable a payment for sin that sticks like nothing else.
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And so in the cross, we find salvation ultimately. That's the negative that we were under the law, but we've been redeemed from it.
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But there's a positive here too. And the positive, did you notice that in verse 5?
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It says to redeem those under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.
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God doesn't just, as it were, in 2020,
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I got my first and only speeding ticket. I don't even contest it.
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I was speeding. So I was speeding. I had a good reason, but again, the law doesn't care about that, does it?
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I was speeding. It was actually a state trooper who got me. Yeah, the
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Roe Valley Expressway got caught somewhere on that. And yeah, he gave me a ticket for 265 bucks.
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But he did say, well, if this is your first time, which it was, you're a very cautious driver.
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So if it's your first time, well, you can do, if you call the court, they'll give you some information.
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Go do a online traffic course and we'll slap 50 bucks off. And if you do the course after a certain period of time, it will drop off your record.
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It didn't drop off my record because it was during COVID. So they forgot. Got kicked off my car insurance and everything.
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It's not a good time. Eventually they did make it right. But why did I bring that up?
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When I went to the courthouse and they said, okay, have you done this? You got a certificate? Okay, great. What happened in that moment?
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My record was cleared. Did I enter into a relationship with the people at the courthouse? No, I have fulfilled my obligation to the law.
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Like I paid my fine, I did my class. One could argue they didn't quite keep the obligation to me, but that's okay.
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I didn't find out by the way, like three years later, but anyway. But did
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I enter into a relationship with the folks at the Jackson County courthouse? No, I didn't.
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But here's what God does in the cross. You see, in the cross, he doesn't just redeem us from our sins.
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He adopts us into his family. And did you notice that Paul says that we might receive adoption as sons?
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That was not the sexist book, but it is a book that reflects the reality of the times in which it was written in the ancient
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Greco -Roman world. You know who had the right to inherit? It was sons, not daughters.
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When Paul says that we might receive, he could have just said that we might be adopted into the family. It could have ended it there, but he doesn't say that, does he?
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No, he says it's so that we might receive adoption as sons, that we don't just become part of the family, but we become those who inherit.
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It's interesting, John in his opening to his gospel, John chapter 1 verses 12 and 13. In fact, let me read it real quick.
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John chapter, if you want to turn there, it might take me a second. John chapter 1 verses 12 and 13. Remember what
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John says there, if you're familiar with this? It says in verse 11, he came to his own and his own people did not receive him.
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But verse 12, to all who did receive him, he gave them the right, literally the authority to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of natural descent or of the will of the flesh or the will of man, but of God.
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Those who come to know the son don't just come to know the son in a general sense.
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No, they come to know the son and they come to know the father. And as they come to know the father and the son, they become those who inherit.
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That not only do we have a cleared ledger before God, as it were, he positively welcomes us into his family.
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Two of the greatest needs we have, the problem of our sin and the problem of our alienation with God, both dealt with in the person of the son.
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So God's gift that we have seen arrived at the right time. It came in the right form.
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It met the right needs. But if you follow it carefully, it will take you to the right destination. It will take you to the right destination.
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So look at verse six. He says, and because you are sons, because you are those who inherit,
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God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
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So you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then
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God has made you an heir. Did you notice the kind of progression in Paul's words here?
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So he starts off by saying that verse seven, so you are no longer a slave. You started off as slaves, but through this mighty work of God, through which he's now able to adopt us into his family, you are now sons, but no longer are you now just sons.
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He says, no, now you are heirs as a result, that those who were outside the most outside are now the most in, if you will, that everything that God has becomes available to us because of the person of the son.
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How do we know this verse six? He says, and because you are sons, God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying,
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Abba, Father. There we were outside the family of God.
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In fact, we were enemies of God. We were the furthest thing from family, but then
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God acted. And as a result, those who were once his enemies are now members of his family.
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And to give us proof of that, the Bible says that he has sent the spirit of his son, verse six, into our hearts.
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The spirit, the Bible tells us elsewhere, Ephesians chapter one, that he is the down payment of our inheritance.
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When I was back in the UK, they still have this store. We just have a store called Argos. Really weird name.
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Argos means idle in Greek or out of order. Never know why they went with that as a name, but the name of the shop is
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Argos. And Argos had this very interesting way of ordering. They had a huge catalog and the catalog, every item in the catalog had what they called a catalog number.
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So when you wanted to buy your item, you went to Argos. And in case you forgot the catalog number, they had these huge laminated catalogs you could look through.
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You then look through, find your item, you'd write the little number or numbers, plural, you'd go to the cashier, you'd give them the slip, they'd punch the numbers in, you'd pay.
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But here's the thing, when you paid in that moment, they didn't give you your items. What they gave you was a receipt, a proof of purchase.
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You then went to another part of the store and they'd call out your number and out would come your items from their warehouse.
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It's one of the weirdest systems I've ever encountered for ordering things, but people love it.
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It's still around today. Here's the thing, when you make that purchase, so you just think, my mom used to send me to Argos all the time to go get like random like house appliances and stuff.
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Curtain rods, that one comes to mind actually. I had to go pick up some curtain rods. So I go, I pick up the curtain rods,
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I pay, I know the system because again, I've been to Argos long enough. When they gave me the receipt, is the receipt my curtain rods or my mom's curtain rods?
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No, it's a proof that I've paid for it. Did I just walk out the store and say, go home and say, mom,
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I got your curtain rods. I could, it wouldn't end well for me. Some of you have met my mom, do not let her small size and nice mouth fool you.
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My mom can get real vicious when she wants to. That would not end well for me. Something about a manual reset to the back of the head.
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No, the receipt says you've paid, you've just not received yet. The Bible uses that language to speak of the
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Holy Spirit that we have not inherited yet. That awaits for the resurrection and the new creation that we'll go into.
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Until then, God says, let me give you an assurance that I'm coming back for you.
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Let me give you this receipt. Oh, by the way, unlike me, I've lost receipts before in August. Not a good feeling.
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Unlike a human receipt that you can lose, that stuff can happen to it. This receipt is permanent.
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It's called the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Paul says that the
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Spirit is there to do one thing. He cries out that you are a child of the
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Father, which means one day you will go and be where your
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Father is. This year I've had the privilege to do a number of funerals for folks, and some of the funerals
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I've done have been for believers. And it's a joy to be able to remind the family in the midst of their grief that, yes, we're committing your loved one to the ground, that the word of God is fulfilled, that when one dies, they go back to the ground for whence they came.
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But as I told the last funeral I did, actually, I told the family, yes, we're committing your loved one to the ground, but let's be sure the ground doesn't get to keep them, that one day the one who purchased your loved one will come back and take what they paid for.
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That's the great goal. That's the great hope of every Christian. And until that day, when we become full heirs of all that God has promised us, he sends his
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Spirit to remind us even in our failures and even in our weakness that we are sons.
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But here's the thing, that's not automatic. It's not that everybody becomes a son.
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It's not everybody who will inherit. You see, all that God has done in sending the son at the right time, in sending him in the right form, in him meeting the right needs, in him leading us to the right destination, all of that ultimately calls for the right response.
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Really, there are only two responses. You can believe in this son and thus receive all that comes with him, or you cannot and thus not receive all that comes with him.
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Everything, okay, but Kofi, we're all believers here. Why do
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I need to be reminded of this? Here's the thing, even as believers, we can sometimes be tempted to forget that we are repurchased people, that we did not get here by ourselves, but that God did everything to get us to this point.
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Actually, it might be good for us sometimes to be reminded of passages like this, that God is the one who sent the son.
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God is the one who redeems those under the law. God is the one who has adopted us into his family. God is the one who has sent his
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Spirit. So the reality is, even as Christians, we need to be reminded of the fact that what we are called to do is to rest in and to receive and to trust the work that God has done in Christ.
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And I never want to presume that everybody I'm speaking to knows this. So of course, for those who, you know, may be here or watching us online or watching this later, the glorious reality is, you have two options in front of you.
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You can receive this gift that God has given, or you can reject it.
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You can choose to receive or choose to reject. But here is the thing, whether you receive it or reject it, this is the only way by which those who were enslaved to sin can be free.
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So let's be clear, your decision to receive or reject is not equal. One leads you to eternal life, to the sure and certain hope of the resurrection that comes from God who can't lie.
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One leads to the destination of all of Adam's sons, ultimately separation from God.
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Those are your two options. And so the question becomes, what will you do with God's great gift?
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Will you receive that gift, rest in it, and walk in the light of that? Or will you reject it?
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Allow me to pray as we come to the end of our time. Well, Father, we do thank you for the gift that you've given.
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We thank you that you gave the greatest that you could give, your own son.
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And that in giving us your son, you set before us the option of death and the option of life.
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For those of us who know you, we thank you that by your spirit, we have chosen life. And I pray that we would always be reminded of that reality.
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That we wouldn't try to, like the Galatians fell into the trap of, try to establish our own perfect standing with you, but we would rest in the standing of Jesus who's made this possible.
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And on the off chance anybody is here or watching who doesn't know you, I pray that they would receive this gift, that your spirit would do a work of opening blind eyes and transforming hard hearts.
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And that ultimately those who don't know you would come to know you, not just as their creator, but as their savior as well.