A Christmas Adoption (Galatians 4:4-5, Jeff Kliewer)

Cornerstone Church

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Dorothy, you really blessed us with that dramatic reading. And guys, I don't know if you realize this, but she wrote that.

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Not only that, she brought the trifecta. She sang, she did the dramatic reading, and this painting right here was also done by Dorothy.

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Isn't that beautiful? That's amazing, it's amazing. Thank you, Dorothy. Let's pray.

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Oh, Father, we come to this point in the service where it's time to open your word. Lord, it's time for us to be humbled before you.

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We need you, God. As we open these pages of scripture, we pray that you would open our hearts and even open our minds that we could comprehend the things that we are reading.

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Help us to understand, but also help us to agree, and not only to agree, but to delight, to delight, to have faith that delights and loves the person that's revealed in the scriptures, and that is you,

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Jesus the Christ. Father, you sent your only son. He was born of a virgin and laid in a manger, a body prepared for an offering, for a sacrifice.

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Help us this morning to love Christ. To love

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Christ more than anything else in our lives. Set our affection on the son of God.

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In Jesus' name we pray, amen. A Christmas adoption.

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Sometimes we don't associate the concept of adoption with Christmas, but I heard a few examples that really connected those two ideas in my mind.

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The first was the Secret Santa program. Anybody ever heard of that? If a family's in need and they can't provide enough gifts for their kids, someone will step in as a

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Secret Santa and kind of adopt that family and provide not only gifts for their own family, but also for this other family as well.

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I heard of another wonderful Christmas adoption. A son gave this gift to his mother.

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She opened up the present to find a picture of a child in an impoverished third world country, and the gift from the son to the mother was that he would now take on this child and adopt that child from afar through Compassion International.

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That was the gift from the son to his mother. A Christmas adoption. Whenever I think of adoption,

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I think of my little brother, because last, I say little, he's like six three. He played for the

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Florida Gators. He's my little brother. But last spring, he adopted two little kids, and it just so happened that we had already planned to be in Florida at that time, and so there with my kids and all the cousins,

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I think there were like 17 cousins there in the courtroom, my little brother prayed and just gave a little speech about what that meant, and it was one of the most tender, amazing moments

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I've ever seen in my life, because the joy of adoption and the passion of that was visibly displayed right before my eyes.

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But I think the best Christmas adoption I ever saw was a video I saw on YouTube, and what happened on that day was a father and a mother had just received adoption papers in the mail two days before Christmas, and so they wrapped them up, and after all the other gifts, they brought out this package, and this little boy, probably seven, eight years old, unpackages it and pulls out the paper, and you see the look on his face when he reads and understands that it's now official, and he doesn't say a word, he just stands up and you can see the emotion on his face, and he walks to that now father for the first time in his life, and he just buries his face into his dad's chest, and they just stand there, it was beautiful, and then he just walks off unable to speak, a

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Christmas adoption. Well, this morning, we're going to connect Christmas with adoption because the

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Bible does that in Galatians chapter four, verses four and five. This is the

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Christmas story. We had the Christmas story beautifully narrated to us through Dorothy's dramatic presentation.

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This morning, we're gonna take it now in another direction and look at the meaning of those events, the meaning or the relevance of those events to our lives.

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The Christmas story is not just information, it's not just a beautiful and sentimental story that we tell every year, it is the most important story we will ever hear, it's the most relevant thing, it is the gospel, and Galatians four, four and five shows us how.

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I'd like you to think of this verse, we're just gonna do really two verses and one sentence.

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Galatians four, four and five, there are six parts to it, and in the six parts,

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I want you to think of it as connecting the dots. As you connect the dots of these six parts, the picture of the gospel becomes clear.

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So this morning, we're just gonna take them one at a time. Those will be the points of the sermon, the phrases of the sentence.

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But the idea of this exercise, the reason for doing this is because Christmas is, it tells us the message of the gospel.

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And this verse, as we take it and understand it, becomes for us a tool for sharing the gospel with our family and friends.

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Or maybe you're here this morning and you've heard a lot about Christmas. Maybe you celebrate it every year like 89 % of Americans do.

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And you think, I get that story, I've heard it a lot. This morning, maybe the dots will be connected in your mind and the pieces of the story will come together to understand that this message of the gospel is really your only hope.

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It's the only hope of any of us in this room. So let's go to that. We're gonna read Galatians four, four and five, then

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I'll set the context and we'll break it down. But when the fullness of time had come,

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God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.

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Look at those six phrases. Number one, but when the fullness of time had come. Two, God sent forth his

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Son. Three, born of woman. Four, born under the law. Five, to redeem those who were under the law.

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Six, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

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This verse is a Christmas gift to all of us. The gospel is encapsulated there if we can only understand and capture each piece.

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Pulling the dots together to see the picture. What's the context here? The book of Galatians was written as a letter from the

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Apostle Paul to Christians in the city of Galatia. The problem was that after Paul left, some other teachers had come in and proposed a different gospel.

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Their version was what's called Judaizing the gospel, meaning that someone would have to first of all become

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Jewish before receiving Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of their sins. So they would say, unless you are circumcised, you cannot be saved.

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You have to obey the ritual tradition of Judaism before you can be a

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Christian, before you can have your sins forgiven. That was the message of the false teachers.

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And so Paul writes the letter to the Galatians. And listen, this book is more valuable than you know.

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Be honest with yourself for a second. How well do you know the book of Galatians? Not many of us could say we know it well.

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Galatians is like the book of Romans in condensed form. The same message that we get explained to us throughout the book of Romans is now condensed.

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Moreover, it gives us the gospel in contrast. Sometimes it's hard to see something.

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In fact, they say that people who are partially blind might not be able to make out something, say if I were to hold up a certain number of fingers.

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But if I were to hold up my fingers against a dark backdrop, then it would become clear and they could see, they could make out the number of fingers that I'm holding up.

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The contrast enables someone to see. The book of Galatians is an incredible contrast.

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It shows the false gospel of the Judaizers in contrast to the true gospel.

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And by seeing the contrast, the gospel bursts forth in blazing light.

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And I know of no clearer place in the New Testament than the book of Galatians to understand the gospel.

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It's a tool for us leaving this morning. These verses then summarize the main ideas.

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Let's follow them. The first one is, but when the fullness of time had come.

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Now to understand that phrase, we need to understand what Paul is talking about in context. So we've said the book of Galatians is refuting some false teachers, but Paul has gone on to make the point that a person is justified by faith, not by observing the law.

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And he explains that Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.

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This happened in Genesis chapter 15, verse seven. It wasn't until Genesis chapter 22 that he obeyed

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God in taking Isaac to offer him as a sacrifice. So which came first? He believed

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God and it was accounted to him as righteousness. Later came the act of obedience, the work, if you will.

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Paul goes on to say, not only is that the case, but also the law was given to Moses 430 years after the promise was given to Abraham.

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Genesis 15, seven comes before Mount Sinai. The promise comes before law.

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So the promise is the way a person gets right with God. So what was the purpose of the law?

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The law was given because transgressions of the people, because of the sin of the people.

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A law was given to conduct their morality, but it had no power to save.

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All the law could do was show the people where they were falling short of the righteous standards of God.

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And that law, because it had no power to take away sin, it could only reveal sin, that law was like slavery to the people of God.

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Follow this. They were in bondage under the law because the law could not take away their sin.

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So this long period of time from Moses, 1 ,500 years passed by and all the while,

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Israel is in bondage to sin. They can never keep the requirements of the law.

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It's only reflecting their sin. So we come to the fullness of time. What does it mean to say when the fullness of time had come?

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Number one, it had been sufficiently shown that no one could obey the law.

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The law, which was giving them commands for morality, was killing them.

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Rather, they were killing themselves against the law by breaking it and the penalty was death.

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Cursed is everybody who does not do everything written in the law. Number two, it showed that Israel would not be able to be the lighthouse to the nations in and of themselves.

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Remember the heyday of Israel? King David was king, but his son

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Solomon built the temple and all the nations would come and they were shining light to the nations, but even

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David and even Solomon were bound in sin, still slaves to sin, and their sons came after them and Israel went from bad to worse.

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The north had nothing but wicked kings, the south went back and forth, but in the end, they were bound up in slavery to sin.

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So Israel was unable to fulfill its charter. Number three, there was some infrastructure that needed to get put in place.

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So number one, mankind is caught under sin. Number two, Israel can't do it as a nation.

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Number three, infrastructure. There needed to be in place roads to carry the gospel, a language to communicate the gospel throughout an empire.

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The Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. The fullness of time indicates that all of these things are now in place for the gospel to go forth.

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There's another thing that was required. Prophecies to be fulfilled.

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In Daniel chapter nine, 24 to 27, we're told the exact time, what year the

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Messiah would come forth. The starting point of the prophecy is when a certain decree is issued for them to go back to the promised land until Messiah comes, the prince, to take away sin.

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483 years on the Jewish calendar. The fullness of time is a fulfillment of prophecy and for all the prophecies of Messiah to come true.

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Number two, for that decree to be issued by Caesar Augustus to go back to be registered in Bethlehem so that Micah 5 .2

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could come to being. So finally, number five, the fullness of time refers to God's providence, that God is the one controlling time.

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And so here is the point. The first point for communicating the gospel.

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It has to begin with a God who is transcendent above this world but active in it.

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Meaning it's not just a God who created the world, spun it into existence and stepped off into space somewhere.

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But there is a God who is active in the world when the fullness of time had come.

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Think about that phrase. It doesn't say when the time came. It says what? The fullness of time.

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Kind of like filling up a bathtub with water. When the fullness of the bathtub happened and it began to spill over.

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The fullness of time, meaning all of these events that are happening in time are building up to this thing.

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The time has come for it to overflow. The fullness of time indicates, first of all, there is a

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God outside of history. He's not part of time, but he's controlling and he's part of this world in terms of providence over the events of man.

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You see, here's the problem. You go to communicate the gospel and you begin to speak of God and they think of Yoda.

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They think of the force. They think that God is just the good and the bad and the energies of this world and we are all part of God and God is part of us.

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Pantheism, panentheism. The Hindu view of God, the Eastern view of what

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God is like. The starting point here, the fullness of time indicates that God is not just a force.

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God is Lord. He is a God who created everything. There is a distinction between creator and creation.

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He is above. There is God who is eternally existent and then there is everything else.

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And this creation, as it unfolds, is his doing, but he is greater than it.

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He is above it. He is the one true God. See, the gospel has to begin with God.

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Now, we move on, we'll go quicker through the other points, but number two, to put these pieces together, to really understand the gospel.

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Number two, God sent forth his son. The identity of this baby who's born in Bethlehem, they give him the name

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Jesus. To understand the gospel, you need to understand that Jesus was forever

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God. The deity of Christ. He was born into this world, but that's not the creation of his existence.

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He has always been God. This God that we speak of that created everything,

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Jesus is in that category. He is in the creator category, not creation category.

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He has the same nature, the same attributes as his father. God sent forth his son.

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His son means that he carries the same attributes, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence.

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He is God. The son has the same nature as the father.

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That must be understood to grasp the gospel. Number three, born of woman.

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The gospel declares that true God of true God, light of light, the son of the father, left the splendor and glory of heaven where he was worshiped and adored by angels and took on the form, the personhood that he already had, deity, he added to that in his personhood, humanity.

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He became a man. The gospel says that Jesus is 100 % man.

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That's what we gather from born of a woman. Now the scriptures, we talked about this, was it last week?

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The scriptures really give us in -depth information about how this was

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God's plan from the beginning. Remember the Proto -Ewangelion, the first gospel in the Bible comes from Genesis 3 .15.

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It would be an offspring of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent even as his heel is bruised.

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Yes, the savior of mankind would need to be man. True flesh and truth flesh and blood, that's what

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I meant to say. Flesh and blood, human. How would it be that God could save an angel?

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Oh, he would have to become an angel. But God never took on the form of an angel.

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He became a man to bridge the gap between a holy God and sinful men and women.

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Next principle, and here's the part that hurts people to hear.

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As long as we're talking about spiritual things that are sort of out there and in the past, people are happy to listen.

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But the next phrase says, born under the law. And it's the law that offends.

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Because it's not only Jesus who was born under the law, each of us is born under law.

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Now there is the law of Moses given on Mount Sinai to the people of Israel. And yet we learn from Romans two, verses 12 to 16 in that section, it's not only those who have the written law given on tablets of stone from Mount Sinai who are under the law, but Gentiles as well have that law written on their conscience.

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The point being, God has a righteous standard. He has a law. And all people are under that law.

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And so Jesus was born under the law.

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We went out to do some Christmas shopping while the kids were practicing for the play.

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And we ended up in Walmart in the candy aisle. And randomly, this man started up a conversation with us.

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And he was very talkative. He had much to say about his philosophy of life and the way things are.

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And ironically, he was very dogmatic about his opinion, even though his opinion was that no one can have certainty about anything.

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Which is really the postmodern mindset. It's illogical at that point. But in all that dogmatism and with all those words, he spoke his philosophy of life.

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And it was really life without a law. Each person is a law unto themselves. And what's good for them is good for them.

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And after listening quietly, I knew that I didn't want to get into a back and forth.

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I just said to him, if you will repent of your sins and believe in Jesus, your sin will be forgiven.

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My wife says, you just cut right to the chase when you're witnessing, don't you? And he was just silent for a second, just stunned him.

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But he came undone from that numbing very quickly. And again, he said, oh, what's the law?

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There's no sin. What is sin? And I said, Moses gave the law in Sinai. It came from God. He has a law.

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And again, he began to hem and haw. And before long, he was done with the conversation. But the point is, the law comes from God.

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Convicts of sin. Contrast that man in Walmart, who didn't want to be under law, with R .C.

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Sproul, who passed away, I think, last week. He encountered

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God. He tells the story of when he was in college. One night, he was just laying in his bed and the sense of the holiness of God just consumed him.

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He couldn't sleep. He got up and he went to the chapel that was on campus. He was the only one in there, happened to be unlocked.

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And in the dead of the night, he went and knelt at an altar and was consumed with terror, just overwhelmed with the

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God who created all things and his own sense of sin. It was the same thing that consumed

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Luther, when for four hours a day, he would confess his sins, feeling the weight of his own sin.

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And then after that, he cried out to God and a sense of peace, as strong as that original fear, came over him.

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The peace of God, because he knew Jesus Christ to be his atonement. You see,

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Sproul understood the holiness of God. So when you listen to Sproul teach, one of the things that impacted me was how he told the story of Uzzah.

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Remember the story of Uzzah? The Ark of the Covenant is being brought back and sent away.

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And so the Ark was put on top of an ox, rather than carried by poles, as the law prescribed.

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And as the ox stumbled, the Ark of the Covenant began to fall off.

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So Uzzah reached up his hand to steady the Ark. And immediately he dropped dead.

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Sproul taught, it's not just that they only used an ox instead of the poles.

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He said, think about it. Why would Uzzah think that he was more clean than the dirt?

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You see, the dirt is just ceremonially unclean, but Uzzah, a man tainted by sin, was morally and spiritually unclean.

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And yet he presumed to touch the Ark. Sproul went on to explain that there are 23 capital crimes in the

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Old Testament. 23 offenses that were worthy of death, and that the people of Israel were to stone a person to death if they committed those things.

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23 things, and people look at that today and say, oh, how harsh is the God of the

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Old Testament? But Sproul says, no, when the world was created, there was one command.

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It was to not eat of that tree, of the knowledge of good and evil, and if you did, you would die.

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Every violation was punishable by death. Sproul walked into the presence of God last week.

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He didn't walk in clothed in righteousness of his own. He walked in like Isaiah went into the presence of God.

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I am undone, and yet his tongue, his lips, were touched by coal, refining fire that removed his sin.

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When R .C. Sproul walked into the presence of God, it was because he had been redeemed by something more powerful and more precious than burning coal, by the precious blood of Jesus.

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The fifth thing, to redeem those who were under the law.

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To redeem those who were under the law. Some of you know,

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I used to play college basketball. One of my teammates, I'll never forget this, was on a fast break, and we threw it ahead to him, and he had a wide open lane to the hole.

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He went up for a dunk and hung himself on the rim. Anybody ever done that before? You try to dunk it, and you just slam it on the front, and you kind of fall back, and the ball goes flying.

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We hustled and got the ball, and noticed that he had run out to the corner, and I still remember him yelling at the top of his lungs, let me redeem myself!

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And so my teammate Russ threw him the ball. I won't tell you his name, because he's the one that's kind of the butt of the joke here.

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And as he catches the ball, he's wide open. He shoots it and just clangs it off the side of the backboard.

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That was his effort to redeem himself. Listen, if you have committed any sin at all, no effort you make will ever redeem yourself.

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You are under the law. If you break the law at even one point, you are guilty of the whole thing, and nothing you do can redeem you from the sins already committed.

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We are all under law, and we are all guilty under law, because we've broken it, but here's the good news.

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To redeem those who are under law, God sent forth his Son, fully God, fully human.

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So here's how this works. He now can walk as our representative, a human man, keeping the law.

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And at every point that I have stumbled under the law, and I like what I think his name was, Rutherford said, he sees in himself the seed of every known sin.

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If I look into my heart, every known sin to man, the seed of it is there, but for the grace of God go

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I. We're sinful people. We break the law at every point, even in our thoughts and in our intentions of our heart.

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We are sinful people. But there came one who walked among us as a man,

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God in flesh, and he kept the law perfectly, and so he has a righteousness as a man that he can impute to us.

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This is the key to the gospel that so many people miss. Righteousness comes when his righteousness, the righteousness of the

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Son of God, the man who kept the law, is imputed to the sinner. The sinner, me, and you who believe in Christ, are credited as being righteous on account of his righteousness.

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It's a great exchange. My sin and my guilt is imputed to Christ. His righteousness is imputed to me.

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It's ascribed to me. It's not infused in me as if I now am becoming so righteous that God can accept me, no.

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The perfect righteousness of Christ is imputed to me as if it were mine.

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And God looks at me that way because there's come one to redeem those who are under the law.

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So redemption, that's a big word. But redemption just means to buy back out of slavery.

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We were held in bondage under the law because we can't keep it. We were slaves to our sin.

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But a price was paid to buy us out of our slavery to sin.

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That price was the blood of the Son of God who had been walking in flesh and blood like us.

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You see how the dots begin to connect? A righteous man, our representative, not breaking the law at any point, that baby born in a manger.

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Hebrews 10, five to 10 tells us a body you have prepared for me. Hebrews 10, 10 says that body was made to be an offering.

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And so the blood of Jesus is shed on the cross and the price is paid for our redemption.

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His righteousness then is imputed to us and on the cross he takes our guilt as a substitute in our place and he carries that guilt away forevermore.

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So there's two imputations taking place. My guilt goes into Christ, His righteousness comes to me.

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And God looks at me as if I have walked in fulfillment of the law all the days of my life because this one born under the law has redeemed me from the curse of the law.

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Galatians three, I believe it's verse 13 says, cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.

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Jesus was hung on a tree to bear the curse of the law, satisfying the demand of death to all those who sin.

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He did that on my behalf and on yours when you believe. And that brings us to the last point. It says, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

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So that, the purpose clause here, the hena clause we talked about. So that we might receive.

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The might there indicates that the grounds for this happening has been established. The basis for us to be adopted into the family of God has been met, has been paid for, has been established in the redemption that Christ has accomplished for us.

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How then do we come into that adoption? Well, the instrument of this adoption according to the entire book of Galatians is faith.

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So what is faith? R .C. Sproul actually explained this as good as anybody

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I know and he helped me with it. He said, faith has three components to it. Faith is one you have to understand.

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Unless somebody's telling you these things, how can you know these things? Faith means you understand that Christ is the son of God.

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God in flesh who kept the law and died in exchange for our death. You have to know those things.

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But number two, you have to assent to them. Mentally believing that these things are true.

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I can preach this till I'm blue in the face, but I can't convince you that it's true. Faith means you believe it's true.

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You accept it's true, but there is a third aspect to faith. And that is that you trust this finished work of Christ for yourself.

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R .C. Sproul would bring a chair up on stage and he would say, this is what this looks like. It goes beyond knowing it to the point where you sit down in the chair and you trust that when you sit, that chair is gonna hold you up.

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That's what it means to have faith in Christ. You throw yourself completely on Christ and trust that his righteousness is given to you and your sin is gone.

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R .C. Sproul gave that analogy at a conference and the next person up to speak was John Piper. It was

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R .C. Sproul's conference, a Ligonier conference. And Piper said, there's something wrong with that analogy.

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He said, yes, you have to trust that will hold you up, but you also have to love the chair.

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You have to delight in the chair. And you know, Piper talks about this all the time, that this faith that's genuine includes this element of worship and loving and delighting that you prize the

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Christ that you now trust in. Listen, Piper was right. And after the conference, when they met each other in the hall,

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Piper was wondering what Sproul was gonna say and Sproul just gave him a hug and said, you're right, you're right.

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You see, faith is not just the mental ascent, okay, fine, that's true. It does have this heart element of trusting in it and believing and delighting and you turn away from your sin because you hate that sin and you turn to Christ because he's your savior and you love him and you want him and you wanna worship him and be with him forever.

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That's how you come to know him. And I didn't say you now become perfect and you obey him perfectly.

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No, you're still gonna sin. You'll still break laws, even in your heart and your motivation.

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But see, this is the point of Galatians. You are justified on account of faith.

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You believe in the righteous one. You believe in Christ. So in closing, don't let

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Christmas just be a day you observe. Galatians 4 .10, Paul rebukes them for observing days and months and seasons and years.

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They think by their religious traditions and by their rituals, they'll be justified. No, you're justified by faith.

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Place true and living faith in the God who rules the world. Humbly receive him and you'll cry out,

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Abba, Father, the spirit of adoption. As the son was sent into the world, he sends his son to live inside those of us who believe and we begin to cry out,

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Abba, Father, as adopted sons and daughters. One last contrast, one last contrast.

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A study was done of 3 ,000 teenagers in America. And from that study done by Christian Smith and Melinda Denton.

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These 3 ,000 teenagers believed five things about God. One, they believe a

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God exists who created and ordered the world. Two, they believe

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God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

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Number three, they believe the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

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Number four, these 3 ,000 teenagers believe that God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when

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God is needed to resolve a problem. And number five, good people go to heaven when they die.

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That's the opposite of the gospel. That's a contrast with the gospel.

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The gospel says that there is a creator who sent his son and that son is

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God in flesh. And there's a law that this

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God has and we are lawbreakers and no one will be justified on account of our works.

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No religious person, nobody who's good and nice and fair as we count those things relative to one another.

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Number seven, the gospel says that the blood of Jesus was shed on a cross for lawbreakers like us and that he is our only hope.

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The righteous representative who kept the law perfectly and died on our behalf.

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That's the gospel. Put all your hope in Jesus. Stop believing that you can do anything to please

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God. You are guilty under law. Tremble like Isaiah did and then trust in the

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Christ. We're gonna close in a word of prayer and we'll ask worship team to come on up.

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Is there anybody here you've been trusting in religion that maybe you do some religious things?

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Maybe you're just trusting that you're a good enough person that God will accept you when you die.

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Anyone who trusts in those things will be disappointed. Worse than that, you'll be devastated because you are condemned under the law of God.

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But this God loves you, he sent his son Jesus and if you right now will humble yourself before this

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God, call on Jesus to save you, to take away your sin.

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He will forgive you. Bow your head, all of us just bow our heads and focus on God. If that's you right now, humble yourself.

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Hear the words of the law and be broken by them. Don't be so prideful to think that you can save yourself, that you can redeem yourself.

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There is a redeemer, his name is Jesus. Call on him to save you, trust in him, delight in him.

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Throw yourself completely upon his mercy. God in flesh, a man who fulfills the law, who's willing to give you his righteousness, to credit you with his righteousness and take your guilt away.

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Ask him to do that for you right now. You can pray something like this, just say, God, I am a sinner.

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I deserve to die like Uzzah who touched the Ark of the Covenant.

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My hands are unclean. I am a sinner.

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I desperately need the righteousness of Christ. I have no righteousness of my own.

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Here I am, Jesus, please save me from my sin. And I trust you.

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I trust in your finished work. I receive you by faith, in Jesus' name, amen.

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All right, guys, let's stand and worship. Is there any, and if you just prayed that prayer so I can know, awesome, awesome.