[Sunday School] What Does it Mean to Be Adopted into God's Family? (WSC 34)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Lord, thank you for bringing us here together again to worship you in spirit and truth. Lord, thank you for gathering us in this room to study your word by way of the shorter catechism. Lord, it's a precious thing that we are studying today, our adoption into your family. The right you give us to call you Father and to relate to you as children. Lord, help us to think well about these things this morning. Help us to glory in them. Help us to find strength and peace and comfort and hope and encouragement so that we can live not as orphans, but as sons and daughters of the King of heaven. And that we can invite other people to come into your family. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, so over these past several weeks, we have been working our way through the order of salvation. Months ago we talked about election and predestination. A couple weeks ago, we talked about effectual calling, we talked about regeneration, conversion, that is faith and repentance. We talked about union with Christ. Last week we talked about justification. And I told you a bit of a lie last week. I told you that in the coming week we'll be talking about sanctification. That's my bat. Next week we're going to talk about sanctification. Today we're going to talk about adoption. In his book, Knowing God, have you ever read that book? Excellent book by J. I Packer. He said, if you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find how much he makes of the thought of being God's child and having God as his father. If you want to understand, or if you want to know how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of God being his father. What do you think of that? You think that's fair? Tim Keller, go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 2:38

And how much other Christians are brothers and sisters? Am I more closely related to a Chinese Christian or Indonesian or whatever than I am to any of my blood care or the relationship itself or that's right.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

That's right. Tim Keller he said, he was in the context of teaching on prayer, he talked about the Lord's Prayer. And so those first two words, like our Father, if you really dwell on what they mean and how significant they are, you might not get past those two words in the Lord's Prayer. You might just camp out there. You might just live there. And there really is something to that. Because in the reality of our adoption, of our coming to be God's children, you have the entire good news of the kingdom in a microscopic or nutshell form. Now there's a word I use there, becoming. Becoming God's children. And it presupposes something, doesn't it? It presupposes that we start off as not God's children. Now what do you make of that? Are we all, every single one of us, every human being created in the image of God? God's children.

SPEAKER_03 4:13

Some are destined to eternal life in heaven, some are destined to sin and eternity available over all using.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Okay, so we have a point on the board for us all being God's children. Anyone want to argue with that?

SPEAKER_04 4:35

Well, to the extent that God made every human being in his image, yes. To the extent that we are rebellious sinners who have aligned ourselves with Mordor instead of Lovatar. We align ourselves with Satan and his rebellion. Jesus said they were children of the devil. We are children of your father, the devil. And I believe that. And I believe anybody who has not received the word of Jesus over the entire package of what he brings to us is not my brother or sister in the same way that a Christian is.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

So you got one on the board for either side.

SPEAKER_02 5:34

I've just heard it expressed, you know, that are the adopted children. Um which presupposes, I guess, a choice. And you find one or both sides.

SPEAKER_05 5:51

Well, I was just gonna say it gives us free will, but he already has what we're gonna choose. So to indirectly, I believe I can only what both Ruby and uh Kenny or Randy said.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Yeah, so there are there are glimmers of truth, right? There is a sense in which we might say that every human being is the offspring of God. Scripture plainly says that. Uh Acts 17, 26. This is Paul on Mars Hill before the Areopagus. He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods in the boundaries of their dwelling place. And a few verses later, he quotes a Greek poet. He says, In him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring. So, yeah, we're all created by God. We're all created in God's image. And remember our talk about common grace a couple weeks ago. He does good to all that he has made. And yet, we have to be careful not to make a category mistake between God as creator and God as father. Our creator is benevolent toward all. He sends his reign on the just and the unjust. He makes the sun to rise and both the wicked and the pious. Uh, and yet he doesn't call us all son. He doesn't call us all daughter. Remember Moses when God raised him up and sent him before Pharaoh, and the message he gave for Moses with Pharaoh was, set my people free, for Israel is my firstborn son. Let them go so that they can come and worship me. Uh, the sons and daughters of Israel were uniquely sons and daughters over against all the other nations of the earth. John 1, 12 through 3, talking about Jesus, to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. So, in whatever sense that we want to say that we were children or offspring of God apart from the grace of God to us in Christ, something different happens in terms of us being adopted into the family of God when we come to faith. Something becomes true of us that is not true of us apart from salvation by grace alone, through faith alone. We become children in the most important sense, adopted children, heirs, members of God's own family. And that's the kind of thing that we're talking about today. What that adoption entails. So, question 34 asks, What is adoption? Adoption is an act of God's grace, whereby we are received into the number and have a right to all the privileges of the sons of God. So we start with that first clause. Adoption is an act of God's free grace. What's the significance of calling it an act of his grace? Think about our talk last week from justification because I asked you the same question last week.

SPEAKER_04 9:18

We have a new identity with Christ and the promise that we are going to spend eternity with him as a result.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

And we have it, right? We are not trying to acquire it. We are not actualizing it in some way. We have it. We have the new identity, right? Because it's based not on a work, not on a process, not on a journey, but on an act of God's free grace. Yeah. And it's already happened. Right? It is an objective reality, is that it is a change of status. It's done, we're in the family. Now, since it's done, can it be undone? Can God disown his children? He's promised not to in the new covenant.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

The church is not lie. Yeah, what's that? He says he cannot lie.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Yeah, he cannot lie. Uh Hebrews 12, 3 through 8. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or faint hearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. So when you're when you're in it, when you're going through the ringer, when you're getting your butt kicked, whether it's a consequence of your own sin or the sin of others against you, you go to that dark place, you have that dark night of the soul, right? And you wonder, has God disowned me? Is this God's wrath against me? Is he afflicting me? Is he punishing me? Hebrews 12 comes in and reminds you that no, you're in the family. Whatever you're experiencing is not God pushing you off. Don't reckon it that. Reckon it the discipline of the Lord. The kind of thing that God does with his children. Otherwise, if God didn't do it, right, if you didn't experience suffering, if you didn't experience trial, if you didn't experience discipline, you would be an illegitimate son or an illegitimate daughter. But God is your legitimate father if you're in Christ. And he's using even the bad things in order to more fully form you in the image of Christ to bring you deeper into the experience of all of the benefits and all the privileges that you have as a son or a daughter. That's what's going on. God's not disowning you, God's not pushing you off, God is pulling you in. Now it's an act, an act of God's free grace. Galatians 4, 4 through 5. When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. Adoption is a consequence of redemption. Adoption reminds us, especially the way it's articulated in this question and answer, that we were saved by grace through and through. And that, you know, that our adoption into the family is so closely bound up with redemption that we ought not to think of it as something that follows our redemption. Does that make sense? It's not as though there are some Christians who are unadopted and some Christians who are adopted. It's not as though some people put their faith in Christ and then respond to him in such a way or cooperate with the grace of God in such a way that eventually they cross some sort of line and enter into the family of God. Membership in the family of God is not restricted to a privileged few within the broader church. If you're in the church, that is, if you're in Christ, if you're in an invisible church, then you're in the family of God. Does that make sense? It's an important distinction, right? It's important to remember that because, in part of what Ruby shared earlier, the way we think about our place in here, the way we think about our place with respect to one another, uh, brothers and sisters in Christ, if we're in Christ, we're related to one another as siblings. Some of us may be more mature than others. Some of us might have gifts, callings, experiences that allow us to bring maybe our younger siblings along, and all that is good and all that is fine, but we have to be at war against any sort of two-tier understanding of Christianity where you got some people who are, you know, the stepchildren, and other people who are actually in the family. Does that make sense? Alright. So the the catechism answer goes on to talk about our being received into the number. It's an act of God's free grace whereby we are received into the number. Uh, and dot dot dot of the sons of God. What is that word received Kano for you? That by adoption we're received into the number of the sons of God.

SPEAKER_04 15:23

To me, it means there is a specific number of human beings who have been, are being or will be redeemed, and it isn't to that number that I am received.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

That's how I think about it. Yeah, and that's right. I'm trying to get us to think and maybe meditate on that word for receipt, though, specifically receipt. Maybe to get us going. Accepted, right? Chosen. Dennis. Chosen, right? Dennis.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 16:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Yeah. Think about a wedding reception, right? You know, what's happening in a wedding reception? Uh you're you're kind of receiving this new thing into the community. And what's sort of, you know, and you can look at it from two angles, right? Are we receiving the couple or is the couple receiving their community? And I think this works in both directions. What we're not talking about is you just kind of taking something from someone. Like you hand me a pen and I receive it from you. Thanks. What we're talking about is an actual welcoming in. We're talking about a folding in, a taking in, an inclusion, an establishment of relationship and community. We're being received into the number in the same way that you receive a guest into your home, right? With all the hospitality, all of the love. I shouldn't even say the same way, because it's actually a more intimate way. It's the way that you would receive a child into your family. Any of you who have had children, you know, when the child is born, you bring them into the family. And it's not the same as if, like, I don't know, you were teaching in a classroom somewhere and a new student walks in and you say, Hey, come on, have a seat. It's something more intimate, something more familial than that. He had thought about it.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

No, in your example of the wedding, but it's also the combining of two families. You know, so it's the each family receiving each other to be one now. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:50

Well, I think of it in also, I mean, I'm not disagreeing with anything. Think of it is terms of a passport and what that passport means when you're doing international travel and have to go through customs or through a passport check. All US citizens there, you know, and I and the reference that I have is it's um um where it is, um, where it talks about Jerusalem and this one, the Lord says this one was born in her.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Yeah. I look that like even when they weren't. Even when they weren't the Lord said that this one was born in her.

SPEAKER_04 18:40

Oh shit, where is it?

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Um, but I don't remember the number. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it you know, I mean, think about the tenderness of your heavenly father who welcomes you into his family, who receives you into his family as a son or a daughter. And why should he do that? Right? If if I catch a guy out in my driveway breaking into my truck, or if he's spray painting the side of my house, making all sorts of insults against me, or anything like that, I'm not inclined to go outside, give him a big old hug, forgive him, invite him inside to sit at my table. Maybe I need to be a better Christian, right? But how what have we done against God? Much worse than break into his truck and spray paint on the side of his house. Uh we've rebelled against the king of heaven. We've offended him in everything we've said and done because our hearts are cold and stony and twisted, we're bent inward, we care more about our own glory, our own prestige, our own reputation. We want to be the father or the mother of our own family, our own kingdom, our own dominion, right? We don't want anything to do with his kingdom. We don't want to be in his family until by his grace he subdues us and he brings us in, he adopts us in, he welcomes us in. And there's no sense as we're received into the numbers, we're received into the family of God, that God is looking down his nose at us. And it's kind of like, eh, fine, come in, or anything like that. It's really, you know, it's kind of startling when you think about it.

SPEAKER_04 20:36

Us lions. Yeah. Us lions.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

Us lions, right. And you know, it's uh it really ought to inform the way we think about how we welcome others into the family. Uh others who have messier stories than maybe what we're accustomed to. Maybe others who wear the marks of their messy story. Uh, you know, we have we've had times in the past where uh more of our inmates from the prisons, it's it's hard because the prison, our prison ministry, the prisons are so far from here. So, like logistically, practically, it very rarely makes sense for people who kind of go through that program to end up out here going to our church. But there have been times in the past when they have, and like, you know, you see a dude who's been in prison, he looks different. Most usually. He's all tatted up, and he's you know, he's missing some teeth. I mean, it's it's very often very obvious. And it's like, you know, whether you can see it or whether you can't, we all come in here with different stories, different perspectives, different baggage. And our being received into the family of God, our being welcomed by grace, not half-heartedly but wholeheartedly by God, really ought to inform how willing we are to welcome people in when they come in here. Uh, not just to tolerate them, but to sit with them, to put an arm around them, to get to know them happily, not as some kind of charity project because we're like singling them out for being especially weird, but because they're a brother or a sister in Christ and we want to get to know them, get to love them the same way we would anybody else in the church. Ready?

SPEAKER_03 22:16

Is there still a sense uh in this day and age that God sees people uh in a context like he did in the Old Testament, where the nations that attack? His people, Israel. You know, no mercy to them. You know, man shouldn't kill them, men and women children, everything. Is there any context in which that might exist today?

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Well, I think even in the Old Testament, even in Isaiah, and my memory's failing me to pull up specifics, but there are circumstances, especially, yeah, I have to look it up. There are circumstances where when he's welcoming people from the nations, refugees, to come under the under the protection of his people. And I think that sort of call to repentance, that call to lay down your arms, I think it's always there and always available. Even for even within whole peoples that God has said, I'm coming after you. I think that's always understood. I think that's always there. And I think that's especially the case in the time of the gospel.

SPEAKER_04 23:35

I think when we encounter a heresy or a distortion of the gospel, I think we don't attack the people, but we attack the we attack the bad theology, the heresy. Otherwise, people will be lured and deceived into some really bad stuff. Seeing it happen in congregations over and over again, where a central idea just sort of took hold and it was not the gospel and it was not worship of the Lord Jesus. It was more a powerful personality that I bet you've seen it too. Powerful personality just, and I think we have to be really stern in that case.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

Yeah, yeah, there's discernment, there's wisdom. I mean, they're I think of 1 John, because 1 John is really all about that, yeah, right? First, you're not supposed to talk about us first then in our sort of postmodern age. It's not how you grow a church. But uh 1 John, well, all the Johannine epistles, they're very much us first then. And what it's doing is equipping you to make a sound judgment in terms of who the us is and who the then is, because you'd like to believe that the lines are clear, but the us first them dynamic exists within the church walls, not on opposite sides of them. And so, you know, texting the spirits about Jesus coming in the flesh, loving one another. Uh, you know, these are the kind of things that we're looking for, and if we're not seeing that, and that's you know, that's what we have church discipline for. Right? Um, you know, John talks about you know the people who go out from us because they go out from us, ultimately they evidence that they were never truly of us. And it's you know, some people make that decision for themselves. Some people, you know, uh that's a decision of the church's leadership, like Jesus talked about in Matthew 18. Someone sins, try and go to reclaim your brother. With the smallest circle as possible. Start with one. One doesn't work, have a couple more. If it's a public sin, that's a little more complicated. If you can't reclaim your brother, tell it to the church. And if that doesn't work, treat them like a gentile and a tax collector. Well, how do we treat Gentiles and tax collectors? We don't consign them to the pit of hell. We evangelize them. We love them, we serve them, we love them like we love our neighbors. But we you know we have to be willing to do that, and we have done that in this church where you know uh it right discipline is one of the marks of the Protestant Reformation. And at the end of the day, it's not it's not about uh riding your doctrinal hobby horse or flexing your power or power trip or anything like that, it's about actually protecting the family of God. Uh, you know, if if you're if in your home there's someone in your family engaging in behavior that's destructive, right, and that's harmful to the family, uh, it'll break your heart to do it in every conceivable way, but you're gonna have to take steps and set boundaries in order to protect the family from the individual who's doing harm. It's the same kind of thing in church system.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

Keith, you do yeah, just for those who don't know, I worked for Apple for 20 years and we had a saying or something that we live by, it would be called coach month or coach now. Where we basically, you know, if somebody was, you know, if we brought them in, we felt we hired them because they had work, and we are gonna do everything we can to coach them to be what we what we saw in them in the first place. And then at some point they have to make a choice that they don't belong here anymore. And we're just going to make it like we're just going to stick to our values, and this is how you this is how we do things here. And if you can do that, great, we want you. If you can't do that, we don't we you know you you're gonna make the decision that you're not comfortable here and you're gonna leave. So that's a lot of charts visible. Yeah, I was wondering where it got from, now I know.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Yeah, Tim Jobs, who hadn't consulted with the CC uh Steve Jobs and makes Steve Jobs.

SPEAKER_05 28:21

Well, I was just thinking of what Randy had brought up. How would that affect today the situation that's going on in Iran versus Israel versus uh the United States? I mean, is at some point is Iran gonna be like wiped off the face of the map? You know, it's is that a decision that God will make? I guess I'm making a big statement, but it makes me wonder what's gonna happen. I think I know what's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a sticky question. Uh maybe, right? I you look at history. Well, you look at history, you look at the old covenant, God is constantly raising up nations in order to accomplish the discipline of the Lord. He's raising up this nation to knock down that nation. And then he's raising, as that nation gets knocked down for, you know, as discipline for what they did to Israel, this nation gets raised up to discipline Israel too. Right? And all that kind of thing goes. It's the you know, it's um what in Nehemiah 2 when Nebuchadnezzar is all high on his hog about being the king of the world. And here's a reminder that God's the king of the world. He raises up kings, he puts kings down. So, you know, whatever happens in terms of nation states, right? God is God is in so God's will maybe to wipe Iran off the off the face of the earth. Maybe, maybe not. That's you know, that's ultimately in the realm of providence, right? Because the church, we're not called as a church, and the United States of America is not called as a holy nation. The church is the holy nation, right? The United States of America is not called as a holy nation to do God's will by wiping Iran off the face of the earth, really.

SPEAKER_04 30:21

I I I mean it is a sticky, tricky question. I'm reading uh uh Balcom again, I read Balcom again and again and again on the book of Revelation, and the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of Christ. Christ will prevail, his role in him will prevail. To what extent the physical nation of Israel is identified as his people, uh, and that's where the stickiness comes in. They will prevail as his people, but they may not prevail apart from being his people. Right. You know, all of that belongs to the politics and the kingdom of Israel.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

Yeah, the the number one the number one mistake we can make in trying to think about all those things is equating the modern day nation-state of Israel with the Old Testament Israel. They are not the same thing. So when when the Bible says things in Genesis and in Numbers about how you will be blessed if you bless Israel, what it's not talking about in any sense is you just baptizing the politics of modern Israel. Right? That's not what that is about.

SPEAKER_04 31:44

Because there are actually more Jews in the US than there are in the nation of Israel. Right. The diaspora of Judy Jewry is still existing.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Well, you you know where you find Israel today, biblical Israel?

SPEAKER_04 31:58

New York City.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

No, you find it in the church. We are the Israel come of age. We are the we we are the eschatological Israel. All right, that and that that is where the family of God lies. And this gets at kind of what I was saying before. In certain forms of dispensational theology, uh, you know, the idea is that there are two peoples of God, and in a sense, there are two families of God. There's two different plans, and the church is kind of a parenthesis in history, and eventually Jesus will come, whisk us off the scene for a while, and get back to the main act with wars and things of that nature. All right, bringing it back, so uh something we've we've mentioned a number of times. We talk about adoption as a change in status. All right, just like justification, where it changes your status from not guilty, or sorry, from guilty to not guilty, from unrighteous to righteous, adoption changes your status from orphan and born or an alien to son or daughter, heir of the promises. That is an objective change that happens. So it's true, right? If you're in Christ, it's true that you're in the family of God, regardless of whether you feel like it. But therein lies a little bit of a rub. We have the objective status over against our subjective enjoyment of the status. So we might not be orphans, but we sure live like orphans sometimes. We might have a right to all the privileges of the sons of God, and we'll talk about what those are in a couple minutes, but we might feel like and live like if we don't have any of that. So how do we know? And where do we go to know that we have been adopted into the family of God?

SPEAKER_04 33:54

I always go to 1 John, which is the confidence epistle. You said it was something else, and I agree with you. I would think of 1 John as the confidence epistle. Yeah. So when my confidence wavers, I go there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:16

Yeah, that's yeah. That's the specific answer or application of a more general principle. We go to the word, right? Right? If you've got a rub with your uh with your earthly parent uh in a perfect world, what do you do? You go and sit with them, right? If you want to feel loved, if you want, and I I recognize brokenness. This isn't everybody's story, but in the ideal scenario, if you want to know the love of your parent, if you want to know that you are their child, go sit in their lap, right? If you're a little kid, and just go sit and talk for them, right? Experience the relationship. How do we do that? Do that in the word. We do that in the ordinary means of grace, right? It wouldn't be a Sunday school class with me if I didn't mention the ordinary means of grace at some point. The word, sacrament, prayer, right? Also, though, you know, these are practices, right? Places we can go, things we can do in order to sit in and soak up the reality of our adoption to God's family. But there's also, you know, the promise of the Holy Spirit who witness what is within us. Romans 8, 14 through 17. All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, the Father. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs of Christ, provided we suffer with him, in order that we may also be glorified with him. Galatians 4, 6 says something similar. Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. If you're in Christ, you have the Spirit of Christ. That's that's a big part of Romans 8. You can't have one without the other. If you're in Christ, you're in the family. And the spirit of adoption witnesses within your heart that you are a son, you are a daughter. So how do you know? This sounds like such a simple instruction, but maybe it's not an actuality. How can you know that you are a son or a daughter of God? Listen. Listen. How often do we struggle to listen? To sit still and to soak in it. Create.

SPEAKER_03 36:39

Uh 1 John 5.13. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. Yeah. That's we read those things and we apply that to ourselves, test yourself and see if you're in faith. Yeah. That's our evidence, I think, that we are in fact the child of God. We wouldn't have that desire otherwise. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

Yeah, the Puritans are not talking about adoption so much as election. How do you know you're elect? Uh, how do you know you've been chosen by God and Christ from the foundation of the world to be one of his? Uh they would talk about, they basically had something they call the practical syllogism and the mystical syllogism. The practical syllogism is look at the fruit, right? Read first John, all it says about loving your brother and all these sorts of things, and ask the question: Do I see this in my life? Do I want to see this in my life? Am I laboring toward these things in my life?

SPEAKER_06 37:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 37:41

And that's what Randy just said. It's like you may be imperfect, just like we're all imperfect, but you're seeing fruits that only the Spirit could put in you. He asked the same kind of questions about uh, you know, uh Galatians 5 and the fruit of the Spirit. Do I see love? Do I see joy? Do I see patience? And where I don't see it, is my heart broken over it, and do I desire for God to be more in me? Okay. You have good reason, right, to believe that you're in scare quotes, uh, if that's true of you. That's the practical syllogism. The mystical syllogism really has to do with your love for Christ. Uh do you love Jesus? Do you want Jesus? Or do you want to want Jesus if you're in a spiritually dry kind of moment? Are you orienting your life? Are you orienting your love toward him and all your devotion and all of that? Okay, again, you would not do that if the Spirit of God was not at work in you. So if you're seeing that in your life, again, however imperfect it might be and however weak it might be for this season, but if your heart and your hands are inclining in that direction, then be encouraged and be of good cheer. That this is how sons and daughters act. I was meeting with a younger guy, and like he was he grew up Christian, but he wasn't really a Christian, and he's kind of wrestling through it, you know, professing his faith. You know, he had an intellectual knowledge of the things, but he didn't really receive them into his heart. And you know, so he doubted. He didn't have any assurance of faith, he he didn't feel like a Christian. And I keep talking to him, he's like, I'm reading my Bible, I'm witnessing to these people, I'm having these arguments and all this sort of stuff. And I don't find myself saying to him over and over again, it's like, bro, that's Christian stuff. Like, you're doing Christian stuff. It's like, why? You almost wonder why the doubt? Right? Why the doubt? And sometimes that's as some of us have that sort of tender conscience. I can think of other people that I've ministered to over the years where like you look at them from the outside and they're the godliest person you've ever met in your entire life. But you're sitting with them or talking to them like every other week about some new thing in their life that's convinced them that they're not a believer. You're like, Yeah, you're wrestling with your sin.

SPEAKER_04 40:07

And people who have uh depressive tendencies, yeah, yeah, there may be something natural in their brain that is setting them up for that kind of habit.

unknown 40:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 40:19

Um so that mental health situation that is sort of paving the vote for them to constantly down. Yeah, I always say, look to Jesus, it's not us having faith in our faith.

SPEAKER_04 40:36

If I look at me, I get really depressed because I'm a bundle of resentments and bitterness and you know, anger, and just if but if I look at Jesus, he died to take away all that, and one day he will take it away a hundred percent. So that's who I need to keep my eyes on.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

All right, catechism says adoption is an act of God's free race whereby we are received into the number and have a right to all the privileges of the sons of God. And of course, you know, quick disclaimer on sons and daughters language. In the New Testament, it quite literally says sons of God when it talks about our adoption into the family. And it even calls women sons of God in Christ, which is the scandal. And the there has been no better religion in the world in history for women than Christianity. And that's part of it. Because it looks at women who previously had barely any rights, very few women had very few rights, and it looks at women and says, You are loved, you are forgiven, you are welcome into the family, and you have a right to all of the privileges. You are a co-heir of your of a heavenly inheritance right alongside all the other men who are in Christ. And so, you know, sometimes we want to clean up the language of the New Testament and talks about and talk about sons and daughters, and that's helpful for avoiding misunderstanding. But sometimes when we sanitize it in that way, we miss the beautiful scandal of in the ancient world granting women all of the same rights in the kingdom of God as men. So when the language when the catechism uses the language of sons of God, it's not excluding women at all. It's so, you know, I put that out there because it needs to be reiterated every once in a while, lest we forget.

SPEAKER_03 42:37

What's the difference between that and reference to the brides of Christ?

SPEAKER_01 42:41

Um, reference to the bride of Christ. It's a feminine kind of yeah, it is it is a feminine image, and there's nothing wrong with that. No, no, uh uh it's close. I mean, the the Bible uses lots of different metaphors and images, and there's a lot of conceptual overlap. Right? So being the bride of Christ, you get a different kind of sense of the intimacy we have with Christ, which in some sense you're like, you know, you know, Christ is your brother, Christ is also your husband. Right? And those two images get you at different facets of the one multifaceted reality, that is your union of Christ. Alright, so those privileges, we have a right to all the privileges of the sons of God. What would you say some of those privileges are? What benefit is it to you that you are now a part of God's family?

SPEAKER_04 43:46

The Lord has promised good to me. His word, my hope, seek yours. He will my something something be as long as life.

unknown 44:02

But that promise good, that Lord has promised good.

SPEAKER_04 44:06

A good thing is coming to the end of the very last episode of uh one of Georgia Dominic's books. Um great good that is coming our way.

SPEAKER_06 44:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:23

I remember telling the kids your future is so bright, you need shape. You know, you can handle all these little sunshine. Glasses, but and I did not get to be this hopeful, what you see today, suddenly some years of passing through depression and anxiety and everything, and finally latching on through the narrative of um the great narrative writers, yeah, talking everything, realizing what our story, how our story ends.

SPEAKER_00 45:02

Yeah. Yeah. That's great. The future is so bright in these shades. What else? What other privileges and benefits do we enjoy?

unknown 45:12

We can come before strong cleaning. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:20

Access. Yeah. God's not your boss. God's not the president of the company. God's not the president of the United States. You know, insert position of authority here. Although those are the true things about him as far as they go, uh, God's your father. So you get to walk into his throne room in the same way. You can't walk into the C suite in a big company. You can't walk into the Oval Office. You can walk into God's throne room and say, come on up here.

SPEAKER_04 45:50

A less worried obedience is another another precious truth that Lewis taught me. We still obey, but we obey in a less worried way. Yeah. We're not anxious Christians.

SPEAKER_01 46:05

Yeah. Even a joyful obedience. You long to uh to delight your heavenly father as a response to his love, not in order to earn it. Yeah. What else?

SPEAKER_00 46:15

Other privileges of being in God's family.

SPEAKER_02 46:25

I like the one that we have his ear.

SPEAKER_06 46:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:31

We are going to be formed into his character. Like him. Because we shall see him as he is. One day we will all be shining, beautiful beings.

SPEAKER_01 46:45

Like father, like son.

SPEAKER_04 46:46

Like father, like son. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:49

Yeah. So yeah, there's a lot we could say here, right? Just the fact that we get to relate to God as Father, right? Not as not just as creator, not just as Lord, but as Father. We can trust in Him to provide for all our needs. Matthew 6, 32, the your Heavenly Father, or the Gentiles seek after all of these things, right? But your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all. He does more than just fulfill our needs, he gives us good gifts. We can expect good from Him. Expect, right? As a matter of promise, not as a matter of well-wishing and optimism. We have the promise that the Spirit of God leads the sons of God. That, again, it's not just an objective legal status, but it's also a subjective reality. God gives us the Spirit to actually move in and through us, to conform us to the image of His Son, and to help us look more and more like sons and daughters. He leads us. Discipline, we talked about earlier, that's a privilege, that's a benefit. I mean, look at children in the world who lack discipline. And look at those children when they grow up, as teenagers, as young adults. See the outcomes, see the bitter fruits of children who haven't been disciplined. And I mean that in the broadest, most generous sense of discipline. I'm not thinking of any particular mode of disciplining children. And so being in God's family, being subject to the discipline of the Lord, it means he cares about us in a special way. He cares about who we become. And he cares about working together all things for our good so that we can become who he wants us to become. Last one I'll mention is we are given a new family in Christ. Especially those for those of us who come from a broken family. That is a precious gift and benefit and privilege. That whatever you may come from, or whatever you may be embroiled in right now, when you come into the family of God, you come into a new family, a family where the relation is closer than even the blood relations you have between your parents and your siblings and all that. Those are the privileges. What do you think in the the catechism says we have a right to all those privileges? How does it strike you to think that you have a right to them? Understand what I'm saying? Or what the catechism is saying? It's not just saying that you have the privileges. It's saying that you have a right to them. You have a claim. You have an entitlement, even. Not an entitlement that you have earned, not an entitlement that belongs to you just because, but an entitlement that is grounded in the grace and the promise of God. This goes hand in hand with the union with Christ stuff we talked about. If we are united to Christ by grace through faith, then everything he did, we did. Everything he does, we do. Everything he has, we have. All the gifts, all the benefits, all the privileges. Every good and beautiful and positive thing contained within redemption is contained within Christ and is ours in him. So all the privileges, all the benefits that we have for being in God's family, we have a right to them all. We're entitled to them all. They're promised to us.

SPEAKER_04 50:46

Yeah, and I have troubles. I do have troubles with the rights and entitlement because I've seen it abuse so much.

SPEAKER_06 50:53

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:58

Right. So those words became cut. Yeah, I understand. Entitled to that. I mean, I have seen that awful abuse of that. Yeah. And um, I know we all have. And um, so when you get moved from rights and entitlement, my neck relaxed when you have this.

SPEAKER_01 51:19

Sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:21

And that that's just a cultural thing, yeah. We are right now.

SPEAKER_01 51:24

Well, right, and and that's that's kind of why I mention it that way, because because we're so we see rights and entitlement so wildly abused in so many ways, and sometimes we want to shy away from it. And we, you know, do we deserve anything from God? No, right? And we know that. We're good Calvinists, we know that extra good in heart, right? And sometimes we forget, we get into this kind of wormy sort of theology where it's like we are reluctant to go before the throne of grace because we know we don't deserve to be there, but we're missing that key gospel moment in gospel reality. It's like apart from grace, we have no right to go there. We did not deserve to go there. But in Hebrews, it tells us that Jesus, through his crucified body, has secured for us the right and the authorization to go into the presence of God.

SPEAKER_06 52:19

And boldly.

SPEAKER_01 52:20

Boldly, yeah. That's the language that the Hebrews uses, right? So we don't have to tiptoe into the presence of God in a bashful kind of way. We can go running in the same way my four-year-old comes running into my office at home and jumps up in my lap without any care for what I'm doing. Right? That's it. That's what we can do. And that's kind of what's involved in saying that we have a right, all the privileges of the sons of God. Being born to your parents automatically gives you the right to be, receive their inheritance.

SPEAKER_03 52:57

You know, you are their child, and everything that they have is yours. That's very similar to the issue of adoptions. Once we are adopted into God's family, we're given that right. It's as if we had been both born. In fact, we were chosen before the foundation of the world, so then that puts us in that position already. Yeah. But the adoption finalizes suits.

SPEAKER_02 53:23

Yeah. The way I kind of parse this out in my mind, the whole white entitlement thing, is it's you're supposed to be married. It's this is where you belong. Like, it's not that your your four-year-old has those white to jump up in your lap, that's where your four-year-old is supposed to be.

SPEAKER_04 53:44

So yeah, yeah. And the promises language just circles me back to Romans and Abraham's faith and the promises of God, and that total confidence that God could and would do what he said. So I can I could sort of bracket out the rights and entitlement stuff, and I'd say, Lord, you know where I am right now in our culture, but I really believe what you say about promises. And you are not slack to fulfill your promises. I have total confidence in that.

SPEAKER_02 54:24

And it's your sovereign.

SPEAKER_04 54:28

It is your sovereign will and power to do, to accomplish.

SPEAKER_01 54:34

Alright, I'm gonna read, I'm gonna read a couple verses to close out our time because our time is gone. This is Ephesians 1, 11 through 14. In Christ, we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. We're sons, we're daughters, we're heirs, and God sends the spirit of adoption into our hearts, crying out, Abba, Father, so that we would know we have that inheritance. We have the right to it. We are entitled to it by virtue of promise. God has yoked himself to us in Christ. God has for God to deny his covenant promises to us, for God to disown or disinherit us, would be for God to deny his very self. God can no more break his promise to you and me in Christ than he could cease to be God. He's adopted you, he can't unadopt you. He's owned you, he can't disown you. He's given you an inheritance, he cannot disinherit you. He can't. Right? Because of his covenant, because of his faithfulness, because of what he's done for us in Christ. And that's the glory of adoption. You have all of these benefits and privileges, not to the praise of your own glory, but to the praise of his glory, his grace. It's good news. It's very good news. Let's pray about it. Lord, thank you for this great gift you've given us. Thank you for welcoming us into your family. Thank you for this time we have now to worship together as a family. We pray that your spirit would bring together brothers and sisters in this room, and that we would enjoy you as we enjoy one another, that we would sing to you and raise our voices together, that you would be delighted in our worship, and that you would use it to build us up, to strengthen us, to encourage us, and to help us to be about the work that you have given us to proclaim the kingdom of heaven. We pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.