Sermon Tone Analysis

Adopted into God’s Family

(CSB)

26 for through faith you are all sons of God in Christ Jesus.

SONS AND HEIRS

27 For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ.

28 There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female; since you are all one in Christ Jesus.

29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.

4 Now I say that as long as the heir is a child, he differs in no way from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. 2 Instead, he is under guardians and trustees until the time set by his father.

3 In the same way we also, when we were children, were in slavery under the elements of the world.

4 When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

6 And because you are sons, God 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 God has made you an heir.

INTRODUCTION

What comes to your mind when you think about Family?

For the most part, our family is important to us.

Whether your mind thinks of the family that raised you, whether you had a mom or a dad, and siblings.

Or your mind goes to the family that you may be starting now.

We know that family is important.

· The thought of family can bring back sweet memories of you and your parents when you were young.

It may be family trips and camping, or going to the drive-in theaters, or family dinners.

Thinking about family may make you recall of the love and faithfulness that your family has exhibited to you throughout the years, whether it be the bond that was built through hard times; whether that be a family loss, or a family struggle.

It may be the continued love that you receive now as you guys continue to be a part of each other’s lives even though you may not necessarily live inside your parent’s homes anymore.

Thinking about family can be sweet, joyful, and a treasured memory that a lot of us have.

· But thinking about family isn’t always as joyful or as sweet.

You may have had a childhood where your family was tumultuous and chaotic.

Whether it be marred with marital arguments between mom and dad.

Or just strife between you and your siblings.

Some of you may have had abusive parents who physically abused, emotionally abused, sexually abused, in the past.

You may have compared your family life to your peer’s family life and wondered why my family couldn’t be like that.

· But there are also some of us here, who might be saying “well at least you had a family”.

We know people who didn’t grow up with siblings, or parents due to some reason in their lives and have had to live their lives trying to figure out life without the family structure.

You may have desired a place to really call home, or a people to call a family, or a place to really belong, but that was just a reality that didn’t happen.

For many of us here, our ideals of what a family is, is why we have found solace and joy in having a church family we are able to call our family.

We have people that we can call our brothers and sisters, a place where we can gather, and hopefully a place that we can be the people who God created us to be.

But I know, that it is easier said than done, and the ideal or thought of family may seem better than how your earthly families or even church families treat each other.

I say all this so that today we would heed the encouragement that Paul has for us in .

However you feel about what a family is supposed to be, and whether you have good or bad memories of family, I want to encourage us to look at how God views His people and His family, and the implications that it has for us as CBF church members.

Paul in our text today, speaks to the believer’s adoption into God’s family.

My hope and goal for us today that we would be encouraged to know that we have been adopted into God’s family and how we can encourage each other us brothers and sisters in God’s family.

So, if you are taking notes, the title of the sermon is

ADOPTED INTO GOD’S FAMILY

Conditions of Adopting

The right timing

The right timing

the right circumstances and requirements

Blessings of being Adopted

We are ‘One’ in God’s Family

We have God as Father

We become Sons of God

RECAP/BACKGROUND

Before we look into Point #1, lets recap on what has gone down so far in the book of Galatians.

Lately we’ve seen Paul discussing the relationship that the two covenants [Abrahamic/promise covenant & the Mosaic/Law Covenant] had with each other.

Paul was wanting to point out that the Law did not replace the Promise and that the Promise was now fulfilled in Christ.

We talked about how there was still a purpose for the law in that it was to reveal us of our sinful nature, it added to our transgressions, and the law served us like a guardian watching over us until Christ came similarly to a guardian watching over a child until he was of age.

We’ve discussed the importance of the doctrine of justification in Christ alone especially knowing that Paul is dealing with Judaizers who are trying to convince the churches of Galatia that salvation can be found in works and becoming like a Jew.

We’ve been discussing justification but now we will transition into the doctrine of adoption.

A very important doctrine that we need to understand as Christians.

Adoption brings about the picture of a family, conceived in terms of love.

The doctrine of Adoption views God as Father and God takes us into his family and makes us His.

This doctrine is so great that J.I. Packer in his classic book Knowing God says that the doctrine of adoption should be seen higher in than the doctrine of justification.

Remember justification is seen as us being ‘not guilty’ before the judge.

We stand before a judge, who makes a pronouncement that you are not guilty.

Packer says that “in adoption, the judge not only declares you ‘not guilty’ but he also gets up off the bench, comes down to where you are, takes your chains off of you, and He says ‘come home with me as my son”

· Packer later states that “to be right with God the judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is a greater thing.

· In justification we are declared righteous and justified giving us a new status, but we not only have a new status, we become sons.

· With God your status with Him was settled when you were declared righteous through faith in Christ.

But it didn’t mean that your life was finished.

We now get to live out that new identity as ‘sons’ and all that comes with it.

· This past weekend Alyssa and I were able to celebrate with two dear friends of ours John and Linda Park.

They were the couple who encouraged us to pursue foster-adopting.

This past Friday, John and Linda finalized their adoption of their three daughters [Mariah, Giada, and Angelica] they went before a judge who finalized their adoption.

This milestone in John and Linda’s life has been accomplished.

The children they have loved as their own were finally legally their own.

But the journey doesn’t end for Mariah, Giada, and Angelica now that they have been adopted, they get to now be a part of their family and live out all the blessings of being a part of that family.

Similarly, when we come to Christ we are justified positionally and made righteous, this is our greatest need.

But what comes along side that is that we are adopted then into God’s family, and this brings a blessing in its own.

In our text today Paul wants to share to us and the churches in Galatia, the great blessings that one has in being adopted into God’s family and receiving the promise that was promised to the seed of Abraham.

He talks about how heirs when they were children are not that different from the way slaves are treated, because even though they are heirs they haven’t reached maturity yet and have not received the inheritance.

He’s bringing back the imagery of the law being our guardian before Christ came.

But now that Christ has come we through our faith in Christ can now receive the inheritance that we have in being adopted into God’s family.

But when one considers the blessings adoption we sometimes fail to see the lengths that one would take in adoption, and as we see in our text there had to be some things in the plan of God that had to happen for us to be adopted into God’s family.

This leads us into our 1st point of the Conditions of Adopting that we see in

(CSB)

4 When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

In God’s adoption in v.4 we see that Christ came to adopt us when “the time came to completion”, thus letting us know that Christ’s coming came at the perfect time that God wanted it to.

When I think about Alyssa and I’s foster-adoption story I think how even though we do not have children yet, the idea of adoption didn’t come out of nowhere.

For one, it isn’t just the fact that we desire to have kids and have had some complications in having biological children of our own.

God has put in us a desire to adopt children even before we got married.

For us, it was seeing God’s love for us in saving us.

For me, it was reading Russell Moore’s Adopted for Life, it was going to C.J. Mahaney’s workshop on Adoption at TGC several years ago, it was also writing a term paper on adoption in my undergrad.

But all these things had to happen in my life, and other things had to happen in Alyssa’s life that God has orchestrated to give us this desire to adopt.

We then had to take the initiative then to go through the adoption process.

Similarly, as a parent takes the initiative takes the initiative to seek out and adopt a child, so it was God’s pleasure and will before the creation of the world to set His affections on us.

When we think of Christ’s timing in coming to save mankind, we shouldn’t imagine God sitting in heaven saying well “now seems like the right time to send Jesus, hasn’t been that bad of a year, yeah let’s send Jesus now” No, God in His great sovereignty was designing all of history for this moment.

Everything prior was orchestrated by God for Christ’s coming.

The fall of Adam and Eve, the promise of Abraham, the slavery of Israel, the coming of Moses, the giving of the Law, the Judges, the Kings, the establishment of David, the prophets, the establishment of empires that would come and reign: the Assyrian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire, the Greek Empire, the Roman Empire.

All these things were established by God to prepare for Christ’s coming.

· Just as a human father back in that day would set the age for when a boy became a man so too with God in the sending of His Son Jesus to redeem mankind.

It was in the fullness of the time that Jesus Christ came, exactly when the Father wanted it established.

Jesus was sent when the law had fully accomplished its purpose as the guardian and showing man its utter sinfulness and incapability to be righteous before God.

There were also other factors that John McArthur alludes to in his commentary of Galatians in it being the perfect time of sending Jesus: