Ephesians 1 verses 5 through 8. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. Then the second passage if you turn back just a couple of pages is Galatians 4 verses 4 through 7. But when the time had fully come God sent his son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law that we might receive the full rights of sons. As your sons, God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, the spirit who calls out Abba, Father, so you are no longer a slave but a son. And since your son, God has made you also an heir. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks Tim. Good morning, how's everybody doing? We are continuing our sermon series that Mike started last week called Deep Stuff, where we are talking about some things from the book of Ephesians primarily that are life changing. And last week we talked about predestination which is an easy topic and no nobody struggles with that one at all. And this week we get to talk about another doctrine which is the doctrine of adoption. And this is actually a quite simple doctrine. The doctrine of adoption is very simple, it's this, that through faith in Christ we become children of God. That's pretty simple. But it's interesting how sometimes simple things are way more important than we even realize. Sometimes something so simple can make all the difference. For example, I've been scuba diving a few times in my life and if you haven't, I would try to do it. It's pretty awesome. But it's kind of expensive so you can't, anyway. When you learn how to scuba dive, you can't just like strap on the gear and go out there and jump in the water because you'll probably die. So they train you, you have to go through an instruction. And the first time I did it, it was very interesting because they're teaching you how to use all the gear, how to breathe through the respirator, how to check your gauges and all this stuff. But then they tell you something that sounds so simple, you're like, why are you telling me this? During the first lesson the instructor looks at us and he says, by the way, when you're underwater, remember to breathe. And I'm like, silly instructor, breathing isn't voluntary, I learned that in elementary school. And fortunately, I didn't say that because then he followed that by saying, remember to breathe because oddly enough, as weird as it may seem, there's something about being down underneath the water that sometimes when people are swimming along and they're not thinking about breathing, they actually stop. And they will inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, and then go for a while before they inhale and they're swimming along maybe 10, 15, 30 seconds. And then fortunately, your body kicks in and you breathe but you're gasping in air and you're trying to get composure. And so what's happening is you're using up most or all of your air so you're not going to be able to stay down as long. And then there's that feeling of dying, that's not very fun. So basically it ruins your experience. If you don't remember to breathe, which is seemingly so simple, it'll ruin your experience. And what I've been seeing here in this, looking at this doctrine of adoption all week, is that basically if we forget that we're children of God, it changes our experience as a Christian dramatically. We're not going to die if you don't quite embrace adoption or understand it completely. That doesn't mean you'll go to hell, but it means that you won't have the joy that God wants you to have because certain things will be sucking that joy out of your life that shouldn't if you understand God as your Father. So we're going to look at this in two ways. Two things. Number one, we're talking about how there's one way to become a child of God, emphasis on become. And then the second thing we'll talk about how there's two ways to live as a child of God. So let's pray and then we'll jump in. Father, thank you so much for your grace and your mercy. Thank you that we can call you Father. Thank you. Bless us now so we can see from your word how important that is. And we just pray that you'll use this time for your glory and our good in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay. Here's that first thing. One way to become a child of God. And this is something that is people don't like this, but here's the reality. Not everybody is a child of God. Okay. Not everybody in the world is a child of God. I know there are certain views or the way people like to think sometimes that we're all God's children, but we're not. The Bible teaches that not everybody is a child of God. The only way you are a child of God is if you have faith in Christ and then are there for adopted into God's family otherwise because of the fall, you're not a child of God. And now to clarify, God is everyone's creator. And Genesis 1 tells us that God created every man, woman, child, every person in his image which gives every single person an estimable value, but God is not everyone's father. It's like Henry Ford is the father of the Model T. But we say that, but we probably shouldn't even use that language because he's not, he wasn't fathering the Model T's. He created them, but he didn't have Model T's sitting on his dinner table at night asking him how their day went and how are things rolling or whatever. So the difference is he did, he invented it, but he wasn't a father to the cars. But God is everyone's creator, but he's not everybody's father because of the fall. Jesus says this, if you look in John 8, 41 through 44, he's talking to some Pharisees who are having a real problem with him, they're trying to catch him, they're trying to get him off guard, they don't like him. And Jesus flat out says the reason you guys don't love me is because God is not your father. And they're really offended at this, but Jesus doesn't stop. He basically just tells him, you are of your father, the devil, who is a murderer from the beginning and the father of lies. And so right there, we know that Jesus is telling us there are people in the world whose father is not God, their father is the devil who's a liar and is treating them horribly. If you're not a Christian, God is not your father, the devil is, I know that sounds harsh, but that's the main reason there's so much strife and struggle in your life. So we can talk about that a little bit. So God is everyone's creator, but he's not everyone's father. Ephesians 2 also talks about this, Paul says that we were children of wrath like the rest of mankind. He says by nature, we were children of wrath like the rest of mankind, meaning that once, now that we've put our faith in Christ, we're God's children, but everybody else who has not put their faith in Christ is a child of wrath or a child of the devil. And then of course in John 1, verse 12, he talks about how everybody who received Jesus was given the right to become a child of God. So we have to understand that not everybody is a child of God, you have to become a child of God. And the way that happens is when you put your faith in Christ, you're not only saved, but you become a child of God. Not everybody in the world can call God father. My son is two and a half and he's funny. One of the things he likes to do, now that he's figured out that my first name is Matt, is when I'm in the other room, he'll call out to me and he'll say, Matt, Matt, come here. And I'm thinking like, this is my son, why is he calling me Matt and so I'll come in and I'll go to where he is and I kneel down and I'll say Noah, listen buddy, anybody in the world can call me Matt, anybody, but only my children can call me daddy and you're my son, you're my child. So I want you to call me daddy and then because he's funny, he'll usually go, okay, Matt and then we kind of drop it. But the reality is not everybody in the world can call God their father and to be able to call the creator and sustainer of all things your father, that is the privilege that we may never fully understand how amazing that is. Think about predestination. We talked about predestination last week and generally when we're thinking of the doctrine of predestination, we're thinking of salvation, the God predestined some for salvation, which is true. But look at our passage in Ephesians, look at Ephesians 1 verse 5, this is so powerful. It says in love he predestined us for what? To be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he has freely given us in the one he loves. And then we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins and accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. So it's there, the redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, that's there, that's part of predestination. But Paul starts out by saying we are predestined to be adopted as his sons. This is absolutely amazing because what this is telling us is that the reason that we're saved, the reason that we're forgiven is so that we can be children of God. That's why J.I. Packer, one of the greatest theologians that we have alive today, he says that adoption is the highest privilege offered in the gospel, higher even than justification. Justification is a doctrine that when we put our faith in Christ, we're forgiven of all our sin, we're also given the righteousness that Christ earned. Higher than that, even more special to us than that, is that we would become children of God. Ferguson, another theologian says it this way, our sonship to God is the apex of creation, the point of creation, and the goal of redemption, the reason that we're redeemed is that we can be children of God. Our good friend, John Calvin, says that the object of regeneration, which is a fancy word for being born again, born of the spirit, the object of regeneration, is so that we, to confirm in our hearts that we've been received as sons, that we've been adopted. This is massive because what this is telling us is that all of the things that Jesus did for us is not just so that we could be free from the penalty of our sin, but so that we could be a child of God like him, it's like this, if you were a criminal standing for a judge, and that judge looked at you and said, listen, you're a criminal, but what I'm going to do is punish my son instead of you and you can go free. If that were to happen to you, you would be compelled to be so thankful and basically worship that judge, but that's not far enough because in the gospel we get even more. That judge looks at you and me, God, the judge looks at you and me, the criminals and says, listen, I'm going to punish my son instead of you, so you are free from your sin, and then I'm going to make you my child. I'm going to bring you into my home. I'm going to father you. I'm going to be your father. Absolutely huge to be fathered by God. I mean, I'm a father and I'll be honest, I like the kids in my neighborhood, but I don't treat the kids in my neighborhood the same way I treat my kids, you know, nice to the kids in the neighborhood, I'll wave to the kids in the neighborhood, if I see one fall off their bike, I'll drive by and kind of throw a bandaid out the window and hope you're okay. No, I mean, I'd probably help them a little, but anyway, I don't treat the neighbor kids the same way I treat my kids, because they're not my kids, but my kids, even though I'm a broken person, a sinful person, I try really hard to be a very loving father. And so when I think about how God is a father to us, and I think about the fact that I just all I want my children to know is that I love them so much and there's nothing they could do to ever lose that love, and I want them to know that I'll always provide for them, and I want them to know that I will protect them, and I want them to know that when things are going great, I want to be rejoicing with them, and I want them to know that when things are going horribly, I want to put my arms around them and comfort them, and I love that my son knows that when he gets hurt or when things are bad, he can run to me and I'm there for him. He fell off a chair and knocked a, got a big cut on his forehead, so if you see him, that's why he's got this weird glue spot, they use glue instead of stitches, which is awesome. But he knows when that stuff like that happens, he comes to me or he comes to his mama, and we just bring him in and we just love him and we say it's going to be okay. Not everybody in the world has that with God, and it's so much better with God because he's a perfect father. And I know some of you may not have had a good father and then you can't, you can't connect that as easily. I had a great father, so it's easier for me, I would assume, but what you need to do, if you didn't have a good father, is put that aside and imagine the perfect father you always wanted and realize it's God. And if you are a Christian, you are being fathered by God. He loves you and wants you to feel all those things and if human father would want his, or human mother would want their children to feel, that's massive, okay. So if you, or realizing that there's one way to become a child of God, and that is only by faith we're adopted, that was a point of our predestination to be adopted as his sons. Now here's the thing though, how does this change your life? How does understanding God as your father change your life? Well, that has to do with the fact that there's kind of two ways to end up living as a child of God. Because I would imagine there are some of you here that you are a Christian, you have put your faith in Christ, you are following Christ as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. But in some ways you're not living like a child of God because you're not realizing what it really means to have God as your father. And so there's two ways to live. If you look at the passage in Galatians that we're looking at that kind of marks it out, he says, in Galatians 4, 4 through 7, but when the time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, there's salvation. That we might receive full rights of sons, there's an option, okay. Because you are sons, God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, the spirit who calls out, Abba, father, it's a very intimate term, that's what a little baby in that time period in that place would first call their papa, their daddy. So you are no longer a slave but a son and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir. So there's the idea that we could be a son of God but still living as if we are a slave. Paul says something similarly in Romans 8.15, you don't have to turn there, I'll just read it to you. He says, for you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear but you received the spirit of sonship and by him we cry, Abba, father. So he says it again. He really wants us to know that God is our father and we can cry out to him as our daddy. Now here's what I want to do. We want to think about how this changes your life, how this changes your life, thinking of God or knowing that God is your father. Tim Keller has this thing that I found that I want to show you and walk you through it because basically what the difference is is even though we are children of God a lot of times we tend to live like a slave and not like a son. And I want you to think of this as the metaphor to help you think of this because in the first century, when this was happening, there were slaves and sons in the same home working together side by side. Don't think horrible horrific American slavery. The slaves were servants, they usually were paid, a lot of them were only servants for a little while or only slaves for a little while so when as I'm saying slave think servant. But in a house there would be a master of that house and underneath him would be his children and his servants or slaves working side by side and sometimes you probably couldn't even tell the difference who was who, but they knew. And the way they related to that master of the house either as a slave or as a child made a big difference. So thinking of that metaphor, think about this. If you are a person who tends to be very fearful, fearful of what's going to happen or fearful of what people think of you or fearful of messing up. The reality is you might be living more like a slave than a son because you're afraid of losing what you have from the master, what he provides for you, what he gives for you. You might be afraid that he could even kick you out of the house because you know that you're a slave. So the relationship is conditional. If you blow it big time he can just send you packing. But if you're a son working in the home, you're fearless because it's your dad. You're not really worried because it's your dad and he loves you and he's forgiven you before. And if you make a mistake, you know, he's going to just forgive you because he's your father. And so there's this fearlessness as a son. And that's what God wants us to have. He doesn't want us to be afraid. That's what Paul is talking about a spirit that of sonship, not of fear and slavery. Another one would be manic or up and down. If you tend to be a person, that is when things are going really well, you're like, whoa, everything's awesome. But then when things start to go poorly, you're just like totally devastated. It might be because you're living like a slave and you don't understand that your relationship is not conditional. You're thinking it is conditional. So when things are going well, you're thinking, yeah, I'm looking good. The master really likes me. But things go bad and you're thinking, oh, he's going to hate me. He's going to kill me. He's going to get rid of me. A child of God can be more even keel, more emotionally stable because he or she knows that when they do something really good, that doesn't make the father. Their father loves them anymore and when they do something bad, that doesn't make their father love them any less so they can kind of just cruise and rejoice with the father when things go bad and they know that their father will lament with them when things go poorly. It's their dad. He loves them. Here's me, the next one. The whole reason I put this up here is because when I saw this, I saw myself in critical. I'm a critical person, at least I have been a lot for the last several months, maybe a couple of years, I don't know. But I don't want to be and I realize this week studying doctrine of adoption that I don't have to be anymore because why would I be critical? Why would slave be critical, maybe of other slaves or even of the children because if you're so concerned with how the master of the house feels about you, you can push other people down, that sort of pushes you up and at least there's persons or people that are worse than you so you feel like you're safe and what I've been realizing this week is that's what I've been doing. When I've been criticizing, when I've been critical of other people or other things, what is happening is I'm trying to make myself look better to my own father? No, I've been thinking about as if I've been a slave and so that's why I'm so excited about understanding and just bathing in this doctrine of adoption that I'm God's child because now I know I can be affirming. I can be affirming because I know that if someone's doing really well, that's not going to affect my father's love for me. If someone's doing worse than me, I can encourage them and it's just, I don't have to be critical. It's just liberating and then lastly defensive, are you a defensive person? Can you take criticism? When somebody criticizes you or tells you something you've done wrong, are you more like, oh, I don't know, you know, I'm trying to justify it or shift the blame or doing something, is that you? Because if it is, the reality is you're living like a slave, you're trying to defend your righteousness because, oh, if the master sees that I'm on righteous, he's going to kick me out of here. But a child, a child of the master can be repentant and say, yeah, I'll blew it because they're so confident in the father's love for them, they're not worried. Like I said, I had a great father, so I know what this is like. I mean, I caused several thousands of, maybe 10,000 of damage to my parents' vehicles and homes over the years. And the one thing is that I always knew, even though I knew my dad would be angry at what I did, especially when he saw the insurance bill, I just knew that I was safe. Even though it would frustrate him that I would do these things, he still loved me just as much. And if you didn't feel that growing up, you can feel it. And even better than I did or anybody with a great father did by having God as your father. And the craziest part is, and this is, I can't believe this, I mean, I can, but it's really amazing. When we think about this, you through faith in Christ, you are adopted into God's family, he is your father. And then you think about how does he feel about his children? Well, I'll tell you, in John 17, Jesus is praying what we call his high priestly prayer part of it, he's praying for the people who would believe in him through the apostles teaching. That's you and me, if you believe. And he says something in verse 23 that should absolutely blow our minds. I'll read it to you. He says, may they, that's us, may they be brought to complete unity, to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you loved me. So when you talk about how secure you are in the love of God, what you need to realize is God loves you, even as he loves Jesus Christ. He is no more likely of taking his love away from you than he is from him. That's so powerful, and then it gets better. If you want to think about how much God loves you and you know that he loves you, even as he loves Jesus Christ, then you can look and see how well, how does he love Jesus Christ? You can flip there if you're fast. Otherwise, you can just listen. Mark chapter 1, 10 and 11, Mark chapter 1, 10 and 11, I'm going to read this, and then I want to use an illustration that I'm stealing from Jim Coffield, because it's perfect. Okay. Mark 1, 10 and 11, this is Jesus has just been baptized. He's walking up out of the water and it says, as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open, and the Spirit descending on him like a dove, and a voice came from heaven. You are my son whom I love with you, I am well pleased. And Jim Coffield tells that same story like this. He said that here's the scene, John the Baptist is baptizing Jesus, they're walking up out of the water, the Holy Spirit is coming down and landing on Jesus, and God the Father is looking down, and he is so enraptured, so in love, he's bursting, he can't even help, but he rips apart the heavens and says, that's my boy, I love him, that's my son. And would you want to think about how God feels about you, even as they have loved, or even as he's loved Jesus, that's what he's saying about you. If you are a Christian, you've been adopted into God's family, and he looked at you and he says, that's my boy, that's my girl. There's nothing that's going to stop me from loving them and protecting them and providing for them and teaching them and disciplining them and shaping them more and more into the likeness of my perfect son whom I love the same. They're Lord Jesus. I mean, can you believe that? Well, if you do, it will change your life, and so the application this week is so simple, but it's so important. Remember, you're a child of God. If you're not a Christian, let me say this, if you're not a Christian, coming to Christ and putting your faith in Christ is not just about getting your sins forgiven. It's also about becoming a child of God. You'll never experience that outside of Christ. So if you're not, if you've not put your faith in Christ, do that today and begin to be fathered by God. If you are a Christian and you realize you've been living more like a slave, remember, every day, every morning, right in on your mirror, in Sharpie, make sure you see it. Think about it regularly. Remember that when things are going wrong, you don't have to be defensive. You can remember I'm a child of God. It's all good. My father loves me. You don't have to be critical. It's all good. My father loves me. You don't have to be afraid. You don't have to be on a rollercoaster. There's so many things. And think about it when we sing. Think about it when we're worshiping. Every time you see something about a child of God, or you hear a child of God, let that remind you of how much God loves you, like the second verse of Be Without My Vision, which just kills me. This is now my great father and I die true, son. Thou in me dwelling and I with thee one, remember that. Let's pray. Father, what an amazing high privilege it is to call you father, to know that Jesus is our perfect older brother who paid our price so that we could be in your family. Father, we pray that this would just sink so deeply into our hearts that it literally would change our lives often and every day that we could be more like our son, Jesus, especially in the way that we enjoy the love of our father. Now, pray, Lord, that you would just use this wonderful truth to build us up and send us out so that we can run with the gospel to our neighbors and to the nations so that Jesus can be exalted all over the world. We pray in his name and for his sake. Amen.