Adoption

Introduction

Before we begin, I would like to ask the question, is anybody here in the room today adopted?

What do you think of when you hear the word adoption?

The dictionary defines adoption as “the action or fact of legally taking another's child and bringing it up as one's own.”

I remember as a kid hearing about people who were adopted and wondering, am I one of these kids who have been adopted?

I somehow worried that this would mean I was less loved or less than a son in my family.

I worried this would mean I am not really even part of the family

and because of that, does my mother really love me like she would her own?

My mother quickly pointed out that I wasn’t adopted so the thought went to rest for quite some time until I was faced with preparing a message about adoption.

I am here to tell you today that my thoughts as a child on the topic of adoption were way off!!!

Has anybody in here ever seen the movie Matilda?

In this movie, a sweet little girl by the name of Matilda grows up in a house where her whole family is mean and abusive to her.

When she starts going to school, she finds a teacher that shows great interest in her talent and makes her feel loved and important, something her family never did.

If you havn’t seen the movie, I am sorry to spoil it for you, but at the end, she is adopted by this loving teacher and you would imagine it is a happily ever after kind of story from here.

The concept of adoption that we read about in the Bible is very similar to this but far better.

Pastor John Piper im sure many of you are familiar with says that, “Adoption is greater than the universe,” and today we are going to find out just why that is.

Galations 4:4-7

English Standard Version Chapter 4

4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

It Starts with the Gospel

We see in this passage that the topic of adoption starts with the gospel.

The text tells us that God sent forth his son to redeem those who were under the law, SO THAT, we might receive adoption as sons.

Apart from the gospel, we have no adoption into Gods family.

So what exactly is the gospel?

I remember before I was saved hearing this word thinking it simply meant a kind of music.

I asked others after I was saved what the gospel was and after thinking about it for some time, they gave answers like:

I guess the Bible

or Jesus

or I Don’t Know

Whenever I talk to somebody new I meet who tells me they are a Christian, I ask this question to see the answers I get.

I was somewhat right as a kid to say that gospel was a kind of music because it is a genre used to describe Christian music.

They were partially right in saying that The Bible was the gospel because the good news of the gospel is contained in the Bible.

They were also partially right in saying Jesus, because apart from Jesus we have no gospel.

But what is it really?

The truth is, in the story of the gospel, we were a lot like Matilda, although we were far from sweet and innocent.

Although we may have had very loving parents in our situation, the Bible tells us that we were born into slavery, and that is slavery to sin.

In Ephesians 2:3 we read, by nature, or ever since we were born, we were children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

We are not children of God from our mothers womb but children of wrath.

So this brings to light a problem.

How does a child of wrath become a child of God?

When the fullness of time had come?

Our text tells us that when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his only Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

The truth is, a child of wrath wouldn’t fit very well into Gods family.

We know that God hates sin and as a child of wrath, sin is the very thing we love, far more than we would ever love God.

Before I was saved, I remember thinking this whole concept of following God seems pretty cool, but I would have to give up X , Y , and Z and I don’t think I am ready to do that.

I just wanna party man!!!

That is what a slave to sin thinks.

A slave would choose their sin over eternal life in God.

So God took care of this for us in the work of Jesus.

Jesus came to redeem those who were children of wrath and slaves to sin so that they could become children of God and be adopted into Gods family.

In order to do that, he had to take care of a big problem of ours.

We all have broken Gods law and the Bible tells us that the reward for this sin is death meaning both spiritual seperation from God and facing his wrath on judgement day.

So Jesus humbled himself and took on human flesh, lived a perfect life in our place, and faced the wrath of God in our place on the cross.

By placing our Faith in Jesus and the work that he did on the cross, our sin is paid for + we are counted as righteous based on the perfect life that Jesus lived.

As my buddy Gary Wurtz would be saying right now, that’s Double Imputation!!

Jesus redeemed us SO THAT we would be adopted into the family of God.

Our New Family

We can safely say that slavery wasn’t no fun.

In our previous family as children of wrath, we felt guilt, shame, fear, loneliness, despair, and many things like that.

But now, that we have been adopted into the family of God, we have been given something very special, and that is the Spirit of God in our hearts.

In our old family, we lived a completely different way but in our new family, we are given the Spirit of God to help us live like someone in his family should live.

As a child of God, instead of shame and all of those terrible things, we feel love, peace, purpose, hope, forgiveness, and thankfulness.

You can imagine the joy Matilda had in the movie when she found out she would be a part of a family who loved her and cared for her.

Through adoption, we are a part of a family where no greater love and no greater care can be found.

Not only are we adopted into the most wonderful family of all, but our text tells us that we are heirs through God.

What exactly does that mean?

Heirs

As heirs, we have received an inheritance through God.

Im sure we all have heard the stories where somebody’s rich uncle dies and leaves an inheritance to somebody in the family.

In most cases I have seen, they go and waste the money on things they don’t need and shortly after are left in the same position or even a worse position than they were before.

Kind of like the story of the prodigal son who took his inheritance and wasted it away all the way to the point where he was worse off than he was before he left.

The good thing about our inheritance that we have in the family of God is that we can never lose it.

Some of the things included in our inheritance are spiritual blessings, salvation, a close and intimate relationship with God, a new identity in Christ, future hope that we will spend eternity in Gods kingdom, and eternal riches that cannot be wasted away like riches here in this world.

These things are far better than any amount of money or any kind of inheritance that we could receive in this world.

We are Children of God, Now What?

We are called to live a completely different life as a child of God but is certainly easy to fall back into our old ways which is why Paul reminds us here in our text that you are no longer a slave.

The way I like to think of it is that its like putting lipstick on a pig.

You can take the pig out of the mud, throw her in a nice dress and put some lipstick on her, but as soon as the pig comes near the mud again, shes going to roll around in it again and get dirty.

We have these same tendencies as children of God.

We are just so used to sinning and still even have the tendency to do it in our very flesh.

We always will have the temptation to go back to our old ways as long as we are alive in this world.

but he says, HEY! you are no longer slaves to sin.

You shouldn’t go back to living in those ways because you are sons and heirs of God.

The way of life in this family of God is far more rewarding than any of the things we can get in this world.

It is important as Christians that we remember this and remind ourselves of who we are when faced when the temptation of going back to the old lifestyle.

Summary

Today we have learned that every single one of us were born into slavery as children of wrath from the mothers womb.

and that is a life of slavery to the very thing that God hates, SIN!

God saw our condition and sent his Son Jesus Christ to redeem us.

By His perfect work and us placing our faith in Him, we get to leave the old wicked life of slavery behind and are adopted into His family.

As children of God, we receive many benefits that we can not be lost.

Even though we are in a new family, we have the temptation to go back to our old ways.

We must remind each other who we are and remember as John Piper said that adoption is greater than the universe.

We share in the most amazing thing possible through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Application

With that being said, The book of James tells us not to be just hearers of the word but doers of the word.

We have heard this great news of the gospel and of adoption into the family of God, but how can we put that into practice today?

I am giving a presentation at my job this Wednesday about a big problem the company has been having for quite some time now.

In my position, I am told that I don’t have big money to spend in fixing the problem so we are going to focus on changing the way people think and changing the way people act.

I think this idea can easily be translated into the application on this text.

The Way we Think

I like to think of this as the awareness level.

As children of God, we should not think the same way as children of wrath.

In fact, the Bible even calls the child of God to a life of repentance which often is translated as a change of mind or changing the way we think.

As children of God, we should examine our lives to see where we are living more like children of wrath instead of children of God.

We must remember that we are no longer slaves but children so we must live like them.

You may ask, “How can we do this? How do we know the areas of our life that we are not living as children of God?”

The simple answer I can give you is to examine this list:

Love

Joy

Peace

Forbearance (Patience)

Kindness

Goodness

Faithfulness

Gentleness

Self-Control

This list here is called, “The Fruits of The Spirit.”

In what areas of your life are you lacking these things.

Are you loving with everybody you see?

Are you patient with people who are different than you?

Do you have control over your actions or do you often find that you are doing things you know to be wrong?

The goal of this application is to become aware of these areas in your life and bring them to God in prayer.

If you are struggling to find these areas in your life, maybe ask your parents or even pray that God will reveal these things to you.

The Way We Act

this is the action level

It is not enough to simply identify the problems that we have and move on, but we must address these problems and act on them.

Albert Einstein says “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

If we simply know were doing wrong but don’t take action to make changes in our lives, we won’t see any positive results.

After you have become aware of where you are living inconsistent with a child of God, take action to fight the problem.

There was a guy at my job that used to give me so many problems that led to incredible stress and feelings far from love for this person.

I decided that I would add this person to my prayers and pray for them regarding the situation.

I will say that my prayers didn’t change the person who was stressing me out but they changed the way I felt about the person who was stressing me out.

At one point I even had a phone problem.

There was lack of self control on my phone and I would spend hours wasting away on my phone which was keeping me from doing important things that I should have been doing.

At one point I even went to the depths of making myself a child on my account and making my wife the parent on the account and having her create the password so that even if I wanted to do more on my phone, I would not be able to.

This process will look different for everybody because everybody has different temptations and will need different methods to combat them.

Sometimes this even means helping friends out who are also children of God whom you see in sin.

Maybe taking them to the side and telling them what they are doing is not good based on what the Bible teaches.

Maybe you see them struggling and you decide you are going to add them to your prayers.

After all, they are in your family and also children of God if they are believers in Christ.

Conclusion

If you are not a child of God today, by placing your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you can be adopted into the greatest family ever and receive the greatest benefits ever.

If you are a child of God, you represent the family of God to all the people in your life, and you have an inheritance that will never perish or fade away.

This is more wonderful than the universe.

Let’s pray.