Slaves to Sonship

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I'm going to be right honest from the beginning.
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This will sound like a theology lesson, so just off the onset.
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We'll be dealing with the biblical doctrine of adoption, and it is part of systematic theology.
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If any of y'all know me well, I love theology, I love systematic theology, it is the synthesization of biblical text to create a truth that God has revealed in Scripture.
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So if this is how it comes off, I apologize.
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And if you plan on taking notes, you better get ready.
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So let's pray.
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Father God, once again, open our hearts, Lord, to hear the truths of your word.
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Let us be encouraged, Father, because you are our Father.
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Father, we were once dead in trespasses and sins until you enlightened us, awakened us through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit to give us life and life eternal.
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Father God, I pray that as I open your word, expound your truth to your people behind your pulpit that, Father, you would be honored.
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In Christ's name, amen.
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I'm going to read three texts, and then we'll land in Ephesians 1, 4 through 7.
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So if you want to turn to that passage, you can, because that's where we'll start.
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Romans 8, verses 15 through 17 say this, for you have not received the spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, Abba, Father.
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The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are the children of God.
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And if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him so that we may be glorified with him.
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And then Galatians 4, verses 4 through 7 say, but when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son born of a woman, born under the law, so that he might redeem those under the law that we might receive the adoption as sons.
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Because you are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.
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Therefore, you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, you are an heir to God.
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And then Ephesians 1, verses 4 through 7, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him.
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In love, he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the kind and intention of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved.
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In him, we have redemption through his blood, forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace.
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The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, with technology then and the ability to travel abroad, the study of world religions became more of a thing to do, to see what was the commonality between the religions and was there anything that brought all of them together.
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Well, a man named Adolf von Harnack, he was a liberal German theologian, philosopher, excuse me, and humanist.
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And what he did is he tried to gather those together and then he wrote a book called What is Christianity? And in his book, he said that it all came together with this, that we are all the sons and daughters of God, and God's the fatherhood of all men, and that every man, woman, boy, and girl are part of the brotherhood of God.
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Well, that sounds good for a liberal, for a liberal theologian, but we are not all sons of God.
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We are not all daughters of God, and we are not all brothers and sisters.
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Now we are all neighbors, but the Bible is very clear that God is the father of one group of people, and brothers and sisters in the Bible are of one group of people, and it's the church.
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And I will make that very clear today.
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The doctrine of adoption is the most comforting and heartwarming and heart-moving doctrine in all of the Bible to me, and I hope to show you that today.
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Becoming a child of God is the privilege and the highest privilege of Christianity.
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Justification is great, but becoming a child of God is greater.
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And I will demonstrate that today.
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The Greek word is huyothosia that you hear when you see the word adoption.
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It is a compound word in Greek.
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It takes up two words, one huyo meaning son, and the other, tithonia, which is to place under, and they put those two together to make that compound word so that it shows the legal part of adoption and the actual relationship part of that.
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It's only used six times, I'm sorry, five times in the New Testament.
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Only five.
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And it's exclusive to Paul.
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So Paul is the author by the Holy Spirit of the doctrine of adoption.
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So what we're going to do is we're going to look at not the exhaustively of the doctrine of adoption, but we're going to look at some theological aspects of adoption and then pull out some application at the end.
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First, it's God's divine choice.
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You look at Ephesians chapter one, verse four and five.
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It says, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless before him.
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He chose us.
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A child of fourth grade or bigger in grade could diagram that sentence.
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He is the subject, chose as the verb, us as the direct object.
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It's very clear that God was doing this, it was his sovereign divine choice to do so.
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And you go on down, it says that we would be holy and blameless before him.
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And in love he predestined us.
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Well, the main verb is the choosing, the election of God.
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And then you go down and it says in love he predestined.
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Well predestined is a participle.
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I know that when I preach, I get all into the grammar, but it's important.
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A participle is huge because it's connected to the main verb.
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God predestined us because he chose us and he didn't predestine us to nothingness.
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He predestined us to adoption.
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God predestined us to be his sons and daughters.
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Does this mean that God predestined some to not be? That is obviously the logical conclusion.
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And I will make a statement on this and not to get off on a tangent.
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But a young man when we did our sovereignty conference asked the question about double predestination.
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I'll make this very quick.
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I don't like the terminology of double predestination because in our minds, we have the symmetrical view of election and reprobation.
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They are not.
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It's not the same act of God and choosing to predestine someone to adoption as it is to reprobation.
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And if you would like to talk with me about that afterwards, I will be more than glad to talk with you about that.
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But double predestination is a loaded thing, okay? So if you wanna talk to me afterward, I'll be more than glad to do that.
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So one, it's God's divine choice to do that.
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God has the sovereign choice to predestine and elect whoever he wants.
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Two, it's redemptive.
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Many scholars believe that Paul was integrating the Greco-Roman culture of adoption.
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And I can see if you try to pull out some practices and adoption that they were doing in the Greco-Roman culture, that I could see where those analogies would somewhat be valid.
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But the problem with that is the Bible never uses the cultural practice to build a doctrine.
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It always goes back to Old Testament revelation, and not revelation as in the end of the book, but Old Testament, the unfolding of God's redemption of men beginning in the Old Testament.
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So I would say that it's very erroneous to use those applications.
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But not one time is adoption used in the Hebrew text, neither is not one time in the Septuagint is it used.
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But the idea is there, and I'm gonna use these two passages to make my point.
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It's redemptive because this, listen to what God tells Moses to tell Pharaoh.
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You tell Pharaoh that Israel is my son, he's my firstborn.
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And if you don't let him go, I'm gonna kill yours.
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Hey, that's what God told Moses.
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So in order for them to be a son, something has to happen.
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Not only that, but you have also in Hosea, which this is also used as a messianic prophecy.
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I'll explain that in just a second as well.
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In Hosea 11, 1, it says that when Israel was a youth, I loved him.
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And out of Egypt, I called my son.
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And yes, did God call Israel out of Egypt? Yes.
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Was it a messianic prophecy as well? Yes, it's both.
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One, he called them out to be his people, to make a covenant with them.
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But those people that came out of Egypt failed to do what God required of them in the testing of the wilderness.
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So God said, speaking of Christ, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Matthew said, out of Egypt, I called my son because Jesus would be the perfect Israel.
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That's why it is part of a messianic prophecy.
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In Micah 6, 4, it says, indeed, I brought you up out of the land of Egypt and made you my son and ransomed you from the house of slavery.
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The greatest act of redemption in the Old Testament is the exodus.
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And it was the taking of God's people out of bondage and slavery and bringing them unto himself, making him his own people, adopting them as his children, and then providing them with all of the gifts and all of the promises and all of the law and the covenants and the priestly duties.
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And to put an exclamation point on that, I want to show you in the New Testament where Paul actually picks up on that.
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In Romans chapter 9, verse 4 and 5, it says, who are the Israelites? They are the ones to whom belongs what? The adoption as sons, the glory and the covenants, the giving of the law and the temple service and promises.
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Whose are the fathers and to whom is the Christ according to the flesh? Who is over all? God be blessed forever and ever.
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So Paul even connects it that, hey, adoption is not rooted in Greco-Roman practices.
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It's adoptions rooted in the Old Testament as God making a people of his own.
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And just as we, as the children of Israel, were slaves in Egypt and they were in desperate need of redemption, so too we are slaves.
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You and I were slaves to sin.
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We're slaves to ourselves.
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We're slaves of the devil.
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And we are in desperate need of liberation and redemption.
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Listen to the words of Jesus.
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This is in John chapter 8, verses 31 through 36.
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He says, Jesus was saying to the Jews who had believed in him, if you continue in my word, then you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.
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And they answered him, we're of Abraham's descendants.
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We've never been enslaved to anyone.
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Now think about that statement.
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They'd never been enslaved to anyone.
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One, they were enslaved in Egypt and God set them free.
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And who were they under the, who was on their neck at this point in time? Rome.
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And he says, well, how is it that you say that we will become free? And Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.
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The slave does not remain in the house forever.
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The son does not remain forever.
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I'm sorry, the son does remain forever.
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So if the son makes you free, you will be free indeed.
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So Jesus was very clear that, hey, you're a slave.
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Now the apostle Paul affirms that slavery and bondage in Romans 6, verses 16 and 20.
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He says this, do you not know that you present yourselves to someone as a slave or to someone for obedience? You are a slave to whom you obey.
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One of two things, either the sin which leads to death or to righteousness leading to life.
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For when you were slaves to sin, you were free in regard to doing what was right.
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Paul's very clear as well.
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And he is consistent with Jesus that we are slaves.
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We are slaves of sin.
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It says we were once foolish.
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Ourselves, we were disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and desires.
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Spending our whole life in malice and envy, being hateful, hating one another, despising one another.
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It says also we were children.
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We were held in bondage.
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We were held under the elementary things of this world.
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But when the fullness of Christ came, the fullness of time, Christ came forth, born of the woman, born under the law.
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What does it mean to be born under the law? Jesus was born under the same covenant that the old covenant people were born under.
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He was born and he came and he had to fulfill that so that people could be set free from the bondage of the law.
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What did the law do? Could the law bring life? No.
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What did it do? It killed you.
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Paul says that.
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He says, hey, I didn't know that I was sinning until the law told me that I was coveting.
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Then I thought I had life.
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And then when I found that I was coveting, I knew I was dead or deserving of death.
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So that shows us the need for redemption.
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So we have God's divine choice.
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We have the second, which is God's redemptive role in adoption.
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Now I want to look at the third one.
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It's legal.
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If you read a lot of the dead guys, some of the Puritans, Dabney, Charles Hodge, well, all of the Hodges, theologians, you look at their systematic theology and you will have 35 to 40 pages on justification.
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And then you will have one paragraph on adoption.
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It's because they made justification and adoption kind of a subset of one another.
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I think that's very, that doesn't do the biblical doctrine well.
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So as we look at this, it is not a subset.
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Adoption will stand on its own merit.
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And I will show you that.
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One, because it's legal.
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Justification is not just as if you never sinned.
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So if somebody told you that, hey, justification is just as if you had never sinned, that's wrong, that's erroneous.
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Justification is not just as if you ever sinned.
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That makes you innocent.
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You don't need to be innocent.
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You need to be righteous.
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You need to be righteous.
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Justification is the one-time forensic declaration that you are righteous before God, acquitted and forgiven of all your sins, and stand before God righteous.
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That happens one time.
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And then you're not made righteous.
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You're declared righteous.
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You're, God's making, is declaring something that you're not in justification.
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Then he gives you the power of the Spirit to walk out that justification by sanctification, which is the act of being made righteous.
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You go, oh, well, what's the big deal? Well, it's huge because false teachers and false prophets will tell you that you are righteous.
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No, you are not.
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You are not righteous.
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You are unrighteous.
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And I will ask you, how much did you sin before you got here? Hey, I know I'm unrighteous.
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I know that I'm not righteous.
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I can tell you I'm struggling with sin in my own life right now.
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God breaking contractual agreements, not paying, and I'm having a constant state of repentance because I want to mop the asphalt with the guy.
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And it's wrong.
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Remember, guys, we were talking about in our thing about being justified anger? Hey, man, it's all right to be angry, but that's unjust anger.
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That's unjust.
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I'm unrighteous.
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So now that sanctification has got revealing those things in my heart, my life, and I confess those things.
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And that sanctification has been working out of repentance and confession every day and day in and day out.
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But justification is a divine verdict of God declaring something that you are not.
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The doctrine of adoption is a divine verdict, but it actually makes you something.
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Adoption is the act of God redeeming you from slavery and making you a son.
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That's huge.
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If that doesn't turn your heart and comfort you, then let me explain it this way.
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Adoption is a divine verdict that deals with our intimate relationship to God as father.
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Justification dealt with us in dealing with God as judge.
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That's the difference.
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We stand before God justified concerning the law and before God the judge.
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Adoption deals with God making a verdict and gives us an intimate relationship to God making us his child and him our father.
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Both of them are verdicts.
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Both of them are legal actions.
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Both of them do something for us.
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But justification declares us something that we're not.
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Adoption actually makes us something.
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It makes us go from a child of wrath to a child of the living God.
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Becoming a child of the most benevolent, the most kind, the most loving, the most compassionate father in all of the universe.
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Listen to how John, the beloved, says it.
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The one whom Jesus loved.
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Imagine that.
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Imagine that.
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Being called the one whom Jesus loved.
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Laid on his breast, leaned up on his chest while they were at the night he was betrayed and distant.
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Jesus was like, man, this is my favorite.
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Listen to this.
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But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become the child of God, even to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood nor the will of the flesh, but of God.
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You are made a child of God by adoption, by God's choice, not your own.
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See how great a love the father has bestowed on us that we would be called the children of God.
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And when Andy prays that in his prayers, and it's one of the things he prays almost every time, what a privilege to be called the child of God.
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It says that he rescued us from the dominion of darkness, transferred us into the kingdom of his marvelous light.
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And it's in him we've had that redemption of forgiveness of sins.
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It says you formerly walked in those lusts of the flesh.
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You indulge yourself in desires of the flesh and the mind, and you are by nature children of wrath.
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But God being rich in mercy, he loved us, made us alive together with Christ, and then seated us in the heavenly places.
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That's what God did for us as being his child.
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It's an amazing thing to be the child of God.
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It's an amazing thing to go from being standing before the judge to the father.
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I want you for a second to just use a little sanctified imagination, just for a second.
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Imagine you're standing in a courtroom.
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The judge, God of all creation, is behind his bench.
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He had his robe on, and according to Psalm 6, it says that he is a righteous judge.
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He is the judge of all things, and he has instruments of death made for those who will not repent.
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And it says he has his sword made ready to execute those.
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And he sits behind his bench on his white throne, his black robe, and there you sit, guilty, guilty of lying, thieving, murderous, adulterous, fornicatious, drunkenness, revelry, hating, murderous.
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All of those things that are in the heart of us.
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And that judge stands up, takes his sword, puts it in his sheath, and says, not guilty.
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Then he unzips that robe.
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He unzips the robe of justice and righteousness, and he walks down and he embraces you as his son.
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If that doesn't stir your heart, you don't know how wicked you are.
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I know how wicked I am.
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That is what God does for the sinner.
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We should have been executed.
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And God says, righteous, and not on your own merits, but over the man that's over there that has the nail scars in his hands and has the pierced mark in his side.
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And he did it in your place.
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And now I have seated you in the heavenly places and given you every right and privilege that was to my son.
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I have given that to you.
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Do you understand that God loves you, the believer, no less or no more than his own son.
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Register the perfect, undefiled, eternal, sinless lamb of God.
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And God loves you the same way.
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Why? Because we are in him.
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We are in Christ.
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That's an astounding thing.
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I have a man that I was very close to for a good bit.
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He was probably, since I've been saved, the closest friend I ever had.
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He adopted two children and got them as an infant.
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And I'm telling you, you would never, and being around them for seven, six, seven years, day in, day out, you would never know that those children were not his adopted children.
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I mean, they were his adopted children.
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He treated them no different.
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And I just always tell him, hey, man, that's an honorable thing.
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You would never know.
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Well, that's how God is with us.
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He loves us and he has given us all the rights and privileges as the son, the perfect lamb of God, as he has, we have.
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And what are those things? Well, one, we have the right to call him father.
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What did Jesus say? I, you, when you pray, you pray our father.
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That's amazing.
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The fourth theological aspect is we have a new family.
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We do.
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We have a new father and that new father has given us inseparable love.
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Romans 8, 35 says this, who will separate us from the love of God? Will tribulation, will distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword.
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For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.
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God, the father now loves us as his children, just like his only begotten son.
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And if you want to go, you can read the upper room discourse.
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If you want to read John 15 and John 17, you will see what Jesus says.
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He says in multiple times, love them the way you have loved me.
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That's the plea of Christ to God, the father.
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So we have an inseparable love.
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Well, another benefit of the new father is he protects and provides for us.
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John 10, 28 verses 30 says, I give them eternal life and they will never, they will never perish.
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No one will ever be able to pull them out of my hand.
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My father who has given them to me is greater than me, and no one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand, for I am the father of one.
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You understand that we are eternally secure.
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We are eternally in the hands of God.
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And just a little side note, if you don't use this passage as pointing to Christ being the Trinitarian God, because technically that is not the case there.
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Yes, when he says I am the father of one, if you read it, it's talking about God, us being in the hand of God and being in the hand of Jesus and Jesus being in the hand of God, meaning both of them are consistently doing what God decreed to do in the salvation of the sheep.
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Read the whole passage.
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It's John 10, dealing with the good shepherd.
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And not only that, we have that protection he provides for us.
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And another thing, Satan and none of his cohorts can bother us.
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I mean, look at Job.
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Could Satan have done anything to Job without God's permission? No.
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Could any of the Pharisees or anybody do anything to Jesus before his time? No.
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What about Paul? Shipwrecked, beat up, stoned, and what did he do? He knew, hey, when he was floating out there in the sea for three days and three nights, he knew that God said he was going to Rome.
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So was he going to get eaten by a shark? Well, no, he wasn't.
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He was going to Rome.
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So he had the protection of the father.
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Listen to what Matthew, in the protection of what Matthew says in chapter 6.
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This is the first recorded message the Lord Jesus Christ preaches.
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Let's look at it in the Lord's prayer.
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We pray this.
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Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name.
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Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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Give us this day our daily bread.
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There's our provision.
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Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
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And here's the protection.
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Don't lead us into temptation.
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Deliver us from the evil one.
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Deliver us from the evil one.
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And then he goes on in Luke chapter 11, verse 8.
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He says, Father, if you, you, me, being evil, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more do you think your Father in heaven will give those of the Holy Spirit who ask for it? Hear that? Evil.
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And we give good gifts to our children.
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And we protect them and we provide for them.
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Well, how much more will your Father in heaven do for you? He says, he goes on in Matthew.
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And if you get towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount, he talks about, hey, the birds of the air, they don't go out and sow and reap, do they? No.
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Do they get fed? Yeah, well, how much more are you to the Father than they are? He says, look at the lilies of the valley.
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Look how beautiful they are.
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They're more beautiful than Solomon in all of his glory.
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Can they ask to have the sprinkler turned on? No, God wets the ground and makes the grass flourish and makes the flowers come up.
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He is the provider.
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And how much more are you important than the grass? How much more important are you than the lilies? How much more important are you to God than the birds of the air? Then not on top of it, does he give us protection and provision with his inseparable love? But hey, he gives us a new nature.
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It's the only adoption that takes place.
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Search them high, low, far, wide, go as far back as you want.
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Only adoption where you get the disposition of the Father.
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Listen to what he says.
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First Peter chapter one, verses three through four.
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It says, seeing that his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and his excellence.
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For by these, he has granted to us his precious and magnificent promises so that by them you would become partakers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption of this world.
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When God adopts us, this all happens in a nanosecond.
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We are adopted into the kingdom.
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God gives us the power of the Holy Spirit.
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And then he implants with us a new nature that wants to follow him and obey his law.
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That's what God does for us.
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He doesn't leave us to our own.
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He provides for us a nature that wants to honor him.
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And then he gives us access to the Father through prayer.
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Hebrews four, verse 16 says this.
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Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
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It says, and this confidence is also knowing that our Father hears us when we pray.
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Communion with God.
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Hey, before you were saved, before God adopted you, could you talk to him just like now? If you think you could, you're sadly mistaken because God does not hear the prayers of the wicked.
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We can come to God whenever.
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God's never going to say the words we say.
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I got to work, sorry.
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Never going to have to say, hey, I don't have time.
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I'm too busy.
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I'm angry at one of your brothers and sisters.
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I'll have to deal with you later.
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God doesn't work that way.
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He is willing and he's ready and he wants to hear and he wants to commune with you.
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And the only way you can commune with God is to talk to him.
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Praying is talking to God.
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I love to hear Jack pray when we pray back here in the mornings.
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Sorry, Jack.
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He says, good morning, God.
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That's the relationship and the boldness and the confidence that Jack has knowing that his father hears him.
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That is amazing.
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Oh, it's just so simple.
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No, it's great.
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That's the relationship that Jack has in prayer with the God of all creation that he can say good morning and thank you for your many blessings.
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Thank you for the spirit.
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And then he goes on to pray prayers and petitions and all that.
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But it's amazing.
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Says we can cast all our cares upon him for he cares for us.
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Look, there's no concern.
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There's nothing that we can't throw at God.
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Nothing.
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Nothing he doesn't want to hear.
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He wants to hear you're mad.
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He wants to hear you're upset.
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He wants to hear you're hurt.
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He wants to know that, hey, I'm struggling in these areas of my life.
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Will you help me? Well, that's what he's there for.
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He's not a genie in a bottle.
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You don't pull him out and pray to him whenever, you know, whenever you have a need.
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No, it's a relationship.
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That's why adoption is so great.
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It makes that relationship with God intimate.
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He doesn't adopt us and stick us into a room.
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He adopts us and makes us an intimate relationship with him that we would walk with him, that we would know him, that we would find comfort and help and encouragement in his provision and in his protection in our life and know that we're being transformed from glory to glory more to the image of his son.
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That is the point of adoption.
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And then this might seem a little odd, but discipline.
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So what's the benefit of that? Well, Hebrews 12, five through eight say this, and this is rooted in the Old Testament.
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It's rooted in Job and it's rooted in the Proverbs.
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It says, my son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord and don't grow faint when you are approved or reproved by him.
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It says, for those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines and he scourges every son whom he receives.
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It is for discipline that you endure.
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God deals with you as a son.
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For what son is there that a father does not discipline? For if you are without discipline, of which you are all partakers of, you are an illegitimate child and you are not a son.
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It's a loving act of the father to correct his child.
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It says in Proverbs, he who withholds the rod hates his son.
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I don't mean beat the tar out of him.
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But what it is saying is, if you're not willing to correct your child, that's not love, that's not love.
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Hey, I'm gonna tell you what, man, my dad would pull his belt off so fast, it's like he's cranking a weed eater.
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Whack! And there was no doubt he loved me more than the rest of them because I got it.
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And I'm thankful for what that was.
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But hey, when I was a younger child, I remember specifically my dad telling me, he never said I was gonna do this because I love you, or it's gonna hurt me more than you.
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I think that, well, it's stupid.
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Stupid.
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They don't hurt you more than it does them.
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But he would say, son, this is temporal punishment.
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If you don't trust in the Lord, this punishment's forever.
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You discipline your child with that, discipline your child with that.
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Now I got hard-headed and it didn't work anymore.
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I did my own thing.
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But I remember my dad consistently pointing to the discipline that the Lord required because he loved me.
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If the Lord is not disciplining you when you are bullheaded and unwilling to repent, and you can just go on about your own thing, it says right here, you're not a son.
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Don't be mad at me.
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Take it up with the writer of Hebrews.
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God will never say, oh, I love my child too much to say.
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And as we children get older, it might not be as prudent.
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But it ain't like that with God.
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He knows how to twist that thing up just a little bit more.
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And he knows his discipline is perfect.
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He'll get his response.
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He'll get what he needs.
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It's just, are we gonna learn the first time around? If anything like me, no, it takes 10, 15.
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I was one of them ones you had to grab by the arm and whoop him in a circle.
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So we have a new father.
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But we have new brothers and sisters.
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This is it.
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This is the family.
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And we all don't like each other, I know.
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We all don't always get along.
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We're all wired 55 different ways.
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But we're brothers and sisters.
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And you know what? If you're here today and you're a believer in Christ, you have more in common with the person sitting next to you.
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It's your brother and sister in Christ and your actual blood brother and blood sister.
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That's amazing.
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And God has given us brothers and sisters so that we can walk together.
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Hey, Christianity is not an island to your own.
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If you think you can walk this Christian life on your own, you are sadly mistaken.
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It's a community effort.
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It's a community effort.
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It takes us walking together, iron sharpening iron, telling one another when we're in sin, hey man, what you did was not right.
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That's not like living like a believer.
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Those are good things to say to one another.
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Now that doesn't mean go around being the president of the Sin Sniffers Association, all right? But it does mean, hey, when you see, anybody see me walking away that's not worthy of the Lord and that's the pattern of my life, come to me.
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I have told the elders that.
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They know me probably more than anybody in here, except my wife, you know? Tell me, because that's what we're supposed to.
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We're supposed to warn one another the dangers of not walking with the Lord.
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I remember me and Sybil, we were going to another church out, a church get together, church function or something, and we were all in the van, and I used to always tell the boys, all three of them, I'd say, tell them what I wanted them to do, and I'd make them repeat it.
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What did I just say? They'd say, da-da-da-da-da-da-da, go around the back seat.
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So everybody said, I said, I said this because I don't want you to get in trouble, so you know.
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When I walk you outside and wear you out, it's because you did what I told you not to do.
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Okay, we understand.
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That probably five or 10 minutes go by, and Luke says, Dad, would you tell Jake one more time, I don't want him to get in trouble.
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That is so kind, that's how we're supposed to be to one another.
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Hey, this is what the word of the Lord says.
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This is what God's word's saying.
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Hey, I don't want you to have to go through any type of discipline, so listen, listen to what the word of the Lord says, because I love you.
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All right, I'll land the plane.
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There is an eschatological, yep, that's what I said, eschatological aspect to being adopted.
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We have an inheritance from the Father.
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It says, we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined, also having believed, when you heard the word, you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who has given us a pledge of our inheritance with a view of the redemption of God's own possession to the praise of his glory.
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Inheritance means somebody's got to die, right? When I die, I'm leaving whatever I have monetarily to my wife so she can find her someone else, except for my car, that will go to my dad, so I can't have my pretty wife and my pretty car, and my old beat-up brushes and work van, well, they get it, my boys, that's it.
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That's all there is gonna be.
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Well, our inheritance in God is, our Father doesn't die, he's immortal.
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So that means you, me, we die.
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And we receive our inheritance.
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That inheritance is none other than God in the presence of God himself.
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You go, man, that doesn't really sound good.
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Well, I know it may not at that point, when you start thinking of it this way, no unclean thought, no impure motive, no wrong deed, worshiping the one who bled and died for you for all of eternity.
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Ah, it just sounds boring.
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Well, not to me.
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Not to me.
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That inheritance is a new body.
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It's a new mind.
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It's the redemption of our body.
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Let me flip over here to Romans 8 real quick.
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I'll start at verse 17.
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And if you're a child, heirs also, heirs with God, and joint heirs with Christ.
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Hey, that is an astounding statement.
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God makes you and me joint heirs with his son.
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And fellow heirs with Christ, indeed, if we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him.
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For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us for the anxious longing of creation waits eagerly for the revelation or the revealing of the sons of God.
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Look, even the creation is waiting for the reveal of Christ and the revelation of the sons of God.
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Why? Because it's corrupt.
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Have you been going through Genesis? What happened? Not only did Adam and Eve fall, but the whole world was thrown into chaos because it become corrupt.
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It says for the creation was subject to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it to it and hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
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For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth, even until now.
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And not only this, but also we ourselves having the first fruits of the spirit, even we ourselves grown within ourselves, awaiting the adoption of sons.
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And what does it say? The redemption of our body.
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Hey, there's coming a day whether Jesus splits the eastern sky or we die, and we're resurrected with the final resurrection of the living and the dead that we're going to have a new body.
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And I think it's in the fifth chapter of 1 John.
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It says, and when we see him, we will be just as he is.
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Perfect body.
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Hey, that's what we're waiting on.
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No more bad eyes, no more broke back, no more bad feet, none of that stuff.
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Perfect.
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Perfect.
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We're not going to be deity, but we're going to have a glorified body prepared for all of eternity to worship the Lord in true spirit and in truth.
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Church, we are the children of God.
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And it's because God in eternity past put affection on you to choose you.
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And in time, sent forth the effectual call of God and the regenerating power of the spirit to awaken you from your deadness, to give you the gift of repentance, which made you turn from unbelief and turn to belief.
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And then God declared you righteous in his son.
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Then he gave you the sign and seal of that redemption by giving you the Holy Spirit to walk out your salvation with fear and trembling and through the act of progressive sanctification.
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And that one day we will be just like him.
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Perfect.
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Perfect.
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Every human being on this planet and has ever walked the planet has three basic needs.
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And I'm telling you, it's not food, clothing, and shelter.
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How important those three are, that is not the most important needs that you have.
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Most important need is you need a right standing before God.
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You need a right standing before God and you need a new family.
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And you got to get a life.
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So if you're visiting today, you're going to say, hey man, that preacher told me how to get a life.
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Well, yeah.
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That's all provided in Christ.
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Your right standing is provided by the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.
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Your new family is provided by the adoption that was provided for you on the shed blood of Jesus Christ through the forgiveness of sins.
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And your new life is provided by God giving you the Holy Spirit as the sign and seal of redemption.
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So if you're here today and you do not know Christ, and when I say know him, I'm not talking about know who he is.
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I'm not talking about read the Bible and know that he was a man that raised the dead people.
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He fed 5,000 people.
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He had some guy walk out of a tomb with his grave clothes on.
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And I'm talking about an insurrectionist Jew that was nailed to a tree.
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I'm talking about, do you know who Jesus Christ, the son of the living God is? He has called you to bow the knee to him.
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He is worthy.
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He is worthy.
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Who in the world would provide everything necessary for you to be right with God? Who? Him and him alone.
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He was crucified.
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He was put in a tomb.
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Three days later, he rose from the dead.
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And these are the words of Paul, the apostle.
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God has called all men everywhere to repent because he's going to judge the world in righteousness by that man.
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And how do we know it? Because God raised him up from the dead.
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I'm trusting in the man that was dead who is now alive.
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And if you're here today and you want to be made a child of God and you want to be translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's marvelous light, that can happen today.
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You can walk out of that door a child of God if you'd be willing to turn from your sin and place all of your faith and all of your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and bow your knee to him and follow him to the day that you die.
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Let's pray.
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Father, Father God, you are amazing.
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You are a good, good father.
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You are a gracious father.
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You are a loving father.
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You are a father that has provided all things necessary.
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You are the sustainer of all things.
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And God, thank you that you love your people.
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God, I pray that today you would be mighty to save.
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God, I pray that those people are in this room that do not know you, young, old, it does not matter.
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That God, you would take out that heart of stone and put in that heart of flesh that would cause that one person to obey and follow you.
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Lord, we thank you.
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We thank you that your word is clear.
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Father, your book, your word and the Bible is not a riddle.
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Father, it's clear.
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It's clear that there are only two types of people in the world, children of wrath and the children of God, children of darkness, children of light, lost and saved, sheep and goats.
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Father, thank you.
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That you have made provision for sinners to be made right with you.
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Father God, I pray that as we will be partaking of the elements, father, a representation of the communion with God, communion with the father through the substitutionary atonement of your son, who willingly did the will of the father for the glory of the father, for the salvation of sinners.
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Father, bless this time in Christ's name.
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Amen.