Would you please take your Bibles or the program that is before you as we read from Ephesians chapter 1 this morning? Please stand for the reading of God's Word.
Ephesians chapter 1 at verse 1, Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him, in love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will. To the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated.
As we prepare for the parenting conference in just a couple of weeks we're spending a couple of weeks this week and next week talking about issues of family and particularly issues of parenting. And this morning I want us to focus on the specific and wonderful truth that the Bible calls adoption. The God is our Father. Now the notion of Father in our time has fallen on some some difficult sledding I think. And it is all due to those great cultural icons, the Bernstein Bears. If you have a copy of the Bernstein Bears children's books in your home, your pastor would suggest to you that you go home and remove them from your home. You may burn them if you like. They are actually bad books. And I really mean that and I hope I'm not personally offending anybody. Maybe the author of the Bernstein Bears is in the room. I don't know. The books turn completely upon the failure of men and fathers. The children's stories that are represented in these Bernstein Bears which I innocently read to my kids when they were little until I realized that I smelled a rat or a bear or something. These fathers are outright doomcocks. They do not know how to be fathers. And they are constantly the brunt of the jokes of their children. And their wives are constantly having to make up for their failures and explain their fathers over sites and failures to her children. Now, at the same time that I do not commend these books to you because I think they send the wrong message, I also think they may raise some of the right questions. And those questions have to do with the e-words of fathers' emotional engagement, his energy in his home, his eagerness, empathy and enthusiasm. And like many of the fathers in the Bernstein Bears stories, I think some of us dads will have to admit, if we're honest and we look at the situation, honestly, that we have been asleep at the switch. But there's something more going on. And I want us to appreciate the more because I think you need to understand that the Bernstein Bears are only literally the tip of the iceberg in terms of an entire cultural emphasis that is denigrating the notion of fatherhood in our time. Let me see if I can explain this. There's much subtlety in cultural patterns today that all Western families must fight. And particularly those of us who would seek to base our understanding of what fatherhood and what families are all about upon, God's Word, we need particularly to resist some of these tendencies. There is much anti-father, warp and woof in Western civilization. Where did it come from? I think it came most immediately. Of course, there's a long history of all of these sorts of cultural things that perhaps goes back even hundreds of years. But most immediately, it can be traced to the person who some people would say was the greatest mind of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud. For Freud told us again and again that the heart of his work, the heart of psychotherapy, the science he invented was that in order to be a healthy person, one must establish freedom and independence from one's father. We may laugh at the ideas of the edible complex and so forth, which Freud brought to our attention much more than before. Nevertheless, we are profoundly affected by these ideas. Even if we do not agree with them, we are profoundly affected by the aura, the atmosphere, the environment that is created by what Freud said. Which by the way, I had more time, I would love to tell you why a person like Sigmund Freud could have such an enormous impact as one soul-loan thinker. And it is because he was not soul and alone. He was connected to networks of leaders in many fields that brought his thinking to the floor. And that, by the way, is the secret to how we change culture is by connecting leaders with leaders in such a way that they make an impact beyond that which any of them individually could make. Much more to say on that perhaps another time. But it is curious and sad when you look at Freud's own life to discover that he hated his father and had a lifelong struggle. With his own father, as did many others who shaped 20th century thinking in philosophy, literary, literature, psychology and so forth, people like Kafka, Sha, Kamu. But truth is, of course, as we all would know, that one never reads oneself of one's father. We might say that the mother is the biological link to the child, but the father's presence is that which establishes security for the child. The father establishes either a safe passage for his child into the world or a fearful one. My father's intimacy with me is actually the verification of my emotions. His closeness allows me to know that my feelings are okay. Now, this is not Freudian. This is just common sense. And it's really biblical common sense. I think you'll see in a few minutes. These are the kinds of things the Bible really teaches us both by example and by precept about the nature of fatherhood. That a father is the one who makes his children feel safe. Literally, a father is the one who establishes the legitimacy of his children. There's no father that children are illegitimate, even in the most literal sense. Now, I hasten to add quickly right from the beginning, as you'll see, that this does not mean that there is no hope for those whose fathers are not present because of death or divorce. And that's really, in fact, the burden of what I want to say to you this morning. Ultimately, whether it's by emotional distance, emotional incapacity on the father's part, by death, by divorce, eventually every human father will fail. And this is the wondering glory of the gospel, that my father in heaven becomes what I missed by way of a human father. Ephesians 3, a little later in Ephesians 3, it says, for this reason, I kneel before the father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. In the name, word name there literally means is patterned. In other words, families establish their pattern, their identity after what God the father has said a family ought to be. Every family has its ultimate identity as a family because God has made it so. The key here, of course, is that God had a family. We might even put it this way, God was a family, father and son. You see, the family is the basic social unit of civilization as designed by God. We didn't make it up. It's not our idea. The first thing God did when he made man in his image was he placed him into a family. And the family, therefore, is the basic psychological unit for meeting all of human needs, much of what I am as a person, has developed in the milieu, in the emotional context, in the psychological environment, if you will, of my family. And so the family is as well the basic spiritual unit for meeting and knowing God. What happens in my family in relation to God is absolutely determinative for my whole life in my understanding of who God is. And this is because God, again, is the one who made the family up. He purposes to work through it. The history of God's plan from Genesis chapter three, all the way to Revelation 22. In other words, the history of the plan of redemption is the history of families. Abraham had sons. God worked in these sons. Jacob had sons. God worked in those sons. And those sons were blessed. And the continuity of spiritual life is one of the center posts of what we call the covenant in the Bible. God covenantally works through families. The fact that your children are your children is extremely important in terms of their spiritual, psychological, and social health. They will derive from you much of who they are in those ways. And he's built therefore the fabric of his relationship into not just individual people, but into us as families. This leads us to the great biblical doctrine of adoption, adoption, which is contained in these words and Ephesians that I read to you. Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. In love he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself according to the kind intention of his will. Of all of the spiritual blessings that God has to give and they're listed here in Ephesians 1. Chapter 1 verses 1 through 14 is really nothing but a listing of spiritual blessings that God gives. Adoption, love, grace, redemption, forgiveness in his blood, the inheritance we have in Christ, they're all listed here in Ephesians 1. But the one that's mentioned first is adoption. What is the best that God can give? What is the best that an earthly Father can give himself? And so what is the best that God gives us in adoption is himself. So what I want you to see here are three things. First, the greatest and grandest privilege of being a Christian is our adoption. Second, the anchor of my identity is adoption. And third, the environment of my healing is adoption. Let's look at each of these for a couple of moments each. First of all calling God Father is the greatest and grandest privilege of being a Christian. It is the fulfillment of all that the Bible promises as I've already indicated to you. It is a distinctively new Testament privilege to call God Father. Father is the Christian name for God. In the Old Testament, what would you say is the Old Testament, distinctively Old Testament name for God. The signature name for God in the Old Testament is what? Yahweh, which means I am who I am. It's a name of regal reserve. It's almost an enigmatic name. It's designed to awaken humility and awe in us. Speaks of God's holiness and otherness, for example in Isaiah chapter 6, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory. Holiness is God's separateness that He's different than us that He's not like us. Now, when we come to the New Testament, nothing is subtracted from this, but rather something is added. And what is added is in Galatians 4. For when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because we are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of the Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Now, Abba is a family term to intimate terms, a term of intimacy for speaking to God. And adoption is the fulfillment of all of the Bible's promises that God will be for me, that God is on my side, that God will come for me and stand with me. So adoption is the way that God speaks of His closeness to us. The stress in the New Testament is not as it is in the Old Testament, God's transcendence. In the Old Testament, it's God's distance in a certain way. But in the New Testament, the stress is on God's closeness, His imminence, it's called. And not only His closeness, but His approachability. In Ephesians 3, verse 12, it says, in Christ, we have boldness and confident access to the Father, it says. And we call God Father, Abba. We can, in the words of Hebrews, draw near with a sincere heart and with full assurance of faith. This is the way the New Testament expresses our closeness to God. And therefore adoption is the chief blessing. There could be nothing better. The Bible argues that God being close to us. There is nothing better than that. In fact, one argument for the unity of the whole of the Scripture is the presence of God with His people. That is what the Bible is all about. It's the history, the story of God's closeness to us. So it's the chief blessing that we can have. Every blessing, Paul says, in Ephesians 1, 3, is ours in Christ. And then he goes on to summarize all of those in terms of the one great grand blessing, as I said, adoption. In fact, our adoption is the New Testament way of expressing the sum of every blessing that belongs to Christians. It is the chief blessing. Now, you want to say chief blessing? What about something a little more basic, like salvation? Isn't that the chief blessing or justification, sort of a right term for salvation? Well, following J.I. Packer here, and probably the most magnificent chapter of the most magnificent book written in the last 50 years, called Knowing God, is chapter on adoption in that book. I want to tell you that I don't think justification is the chief blessing. It's foundational, but it's not the chief blessing. In other words, justification is the primary privilege, but adoption is the highest privilege. Justification sees God as a judge. Adoption sees God as father. Justification talks about our passage from death to life, but adoption speaks of us coming out of the bondage of slavery to safety, certainty, enjoyment of being a part of God's family. Justification speaks about our security. Adoption speaks about our intimacy. Justification talks about getting off the gutter and onto the curb saved from the oncoming traffic. But adoption speaks about us being ushered into the front door of the house and being given all the benefits and all the privileges of being a son or daughter of God in the father's house. So, calling God father is the greatest and grandest privilege of being a Christian. Second, adoption is the anchor of my deepest and truest identity. The deepest problems in our spiritual lives, those problems that we think are unsolvable. Those intractable, emotional places in our lives where we are stuck. Whatever you're thinking of, when I say that about you, these things come to us because we do not know God as father. So, we lack a real identity. Just like a child without a father lacks a real identity. Without God, our father, we have no real, true, deep emotional and spiritual identity because we lack a firm assurance of God's love as our father. At the deepest of levels, we might say, just like the illegitimate child doesn't know who he or she is. Doesn't know his or her name, right? So, too, if we don't understand the teaching, the great teaching of adoption, we don't know who we are. Biblically speaking, we don't know our family name. The name that the father gives us in the marriage of Jesus Christ, the great bridegroom to his bride us. The name that we are given is the name of our elder brother, Christ. We are called Christians, one with Christ. But it's a family name, and we don't have consciousness of our true identity. And we need to be reminded of it. This is one of the reasons why God changes the names of people in the Bible. Abraham becomes Abraham. Saul becomes Paul. Why? Because it's a way in which God is giving confidence of his calling to these people by actually naming a new name for them. And we all need disassurance about our calling. We all need the assurance that only the Holy Spirit can give. Again, I wish I had much more time. I'd love to look with you at Romans chapter 8. We'll do it in another time, but the whole purpose of Romans 8 is to assure you that the Holy Spirit has enabled you to call God's father. And that the Holy Spirit is at work within you right now, if you are a believer in Christ. Giving you, as it were, a supernatural ability to do precisely that, that I am a specific child of God. I'm not just part of a herd or a mass. I'm a specific child of God, and the father knows me. Not only do we lack identity, but we also lack acceptance in the way we think about ourselves, too, don't we? The imperfect parenting means that by definition we all suffer from a lack of acceptance. But there's joy and the trinity. In the sonship of Jesus, we are fully accepted by the Father. You see why the Bible says we are in Christ? You see how important that notion is? We are held in Christ so that the way the Father thinks of Christ is the way he thinks of us. And the way he thinks of Christ is that he accepted him completely and utterly. This is the deep meaning of election, as it's described here in Ephesians chapter 1. Election isn't a cold and awful doctrine that's intended to make us kind of upset with God because why does he do it that way? Election is not intended to make us speculate about who God picks and who God doesn't. If God picks some and not others, then why do I even bother to share my faith? All of that misses the point, completely. The whole point of speaking about our being chosen in Christ, about our being predestined in Christ, as he does here in this words in Ephesians 1, is comfort. It's that you would be comforted by the fact that the Father has had his eye on you from before the dawn of time. It's not to raise speculation. It's to raise your comfort. And then there's a lack of confidence. There's a lack of real identity. There's a lack of real acceptance in our lives, too. When we don't understand that our deepest and truest anchor is adoption. We're never safe. We're never safe emotionally, even if we're safe doctrinally. In other words, how many people do you know who seem to believe all the right things? They have the Bible down cold. I mean, they've got it. They know it all. But there's not a warmth and a grace and a sense of ease about their life. That you think the very things they believe should give them, but somehow there's a disconnect. They're always afraid. They're always in flight. They're looking for what they never adequately received earlier. They're walking around with their embilical cords hanging out looking for somewhere to plug them in. Scratch beneath the restlessness of modern man with all of our searching for that perfect job, that perfect house, that perfect car, that perfect golden retriever who's just picture perfect. And what you see is that there's a profound sense that we're not assured that we're okay because there's a lack of deep confidence. And then there's a lack of community. Other people are dangerous. They're not safe to trust. This really does happen. Despite all of our smiles and our friendliness and our social graces, we actually feel very alone. And we're actually not sure we can trust other people. Chemo said other people are hell. How about that for being blunt? That's what he said. And the sense is that there's something through there. I can't trust myself to other people. I dare not trust myself to other people. What might they do with me? What might you think if you really knew me? This is why I see so many men in their 40s, 50s and 60s who say all the right things as we Christian guys, you know, slap them on the back and good Sunday school smiles, but underneath they're cynical. They're cynical as could be. Why? Because they don't believe the gospel works. They no longer see it work in their lives. They feel very isolated. And they say even even about their own wives, they'll often say if she really knew me, she wouldn't accept me. Let alone about other people. There's a lack of hope for some. A kind of despairing fatalism about my life and personality. I can't change the fear that I just can't change. It's too late. But when we become children again in Christ, then there's a kind of plasticity about our personalities. It's like instead of being rigid, hard clay pots, the only way to change their shape is to shatter them. We become like clay pots still wet on the wheel spinning around, still moldable, still changeable. I love seeing men in their 70s and 80s women in their 70s and 80s changing for Jesus as they begin to realize that God is their father and that he has accepted them. And they can have hope so that the habits of mind and heart, which we just say, well, that's just the way I am. That says, I can't do anybody. It's just who you are, who I am. Now, we need to hear Romans 8 speak to those things because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God, Paul says there. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear. That's what we're talking about when we speak in that way, aren't we? But you received the spirit of sonship and by him we cry of a father. The spirit itself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God. We need all the resources of the Trinity to realize our adoption. We need to know that God is our father. We need to know that Jesus is our brother and we need to know that the Holy Spirit is the only one who can make these things true in our lives and hearts. And we do need to take very seriously the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Very seriously. So adoption is the greatest, grandest privilege of being a Christian second. It's the anchor of my identity and third for just a minute as we end. Adoption is the milieu. It's the environment of our healing. This happens in a couple of ways I want to suggest. First, in relation to my parents, adoption enables me to do what I must do as an adult. What must I do in relation to my parents as an adult, whether they're even alive, whether they're no longer living, whether they live down the street from you right now, or whether they live on the other side of the world, what must I do in relation to my parents in order to know my adoption by God the Father? The answer, I need to leave my parents. And if you want to know the truth, there are many of us who have never learned how to leave our parents and our marriages are a mess because of that one fact. We've never learned to leave and cleave and our own marriages and our own parenting will suffer until we cleave to one other in the creation of a new family unit which is the way God intended it to be. This does not mean we don't honor our parents. It just means we learn to leave them in the right sort of way. We are bound to the wounds produced by our parents in perfect parenting if we don't leave them. Did you hear what I said? We are bound to the wounds of our parents in perfect parenting until we learn to leave them. If my mother's love is unwittingly conditional, maybe she didn't even mean it that way, but that's the way it came across. If my father was distant emotionally because he was preoccupied with work or whatever else, then my life, what? My adult life becomes the pursuit of that which I missed as a child. This is not Freudian. This is Bible common sense so that my adult achievements are the scabs of my childhood wounds. And even all the great things I do as an adult can be understood as the cover for what I'm trying to hide with the hurt underneath. We are bound to reproduce that in our own parents for which we cannot forgive them. The sins of the fathers are visited on the children to the third and fourth generation. When we don't forgive, we become bitter. And when we become bitter, we become entrenched in a weird and twisted way to reproduce that for which we cannot forgive. How many 45-year-old women do you know would say, I absolutely refuse to be like my mother. I will never be like my mother. And you go, excuse me, you are exactly like your mother. We must learn to forgive our parents. That's how you leave them. It's by forgiving them. Even if they are gone now, we need to learn to forgive them for their failures. Just as I hope, hope against hope that my children will forgive me for mine. So I need to learn to forgive my parents in order to leave them. And secondly, I need to know that adoption is telling me what I am becoming. In the fallenness of the world and the brokenness of sin, it tells me that I am far worse than I thought. Look, the fallenness of this world and the brokenness of this world tells you you are a whole lot worse than our nice, neat, social, and even spiritual compartments of living tell us. Where a lot worse. But adoption tells me a different truth. The family secret in God's family is that I am in the process of being made like my elder brother Jesus. And that in every respect, one day I will be like him. And I will not be the broken person that I am now or certainly the broken person I would otherwise be. We are at not for my father's adoption of me in his son Jesus. So Paul could say in Romans 8, we are joint heirs with Christ that we may be glorified together. That's it. Glorified together. That's what's going to happen to us. We are going to be glorified together with Jesus. And Apostle John says, now beloved, we are the children of God. And it has not yet appeared what we shall be. But this we know when he appears, we shall be like him. Do you see what adoption means? Adoption tells you what you're becoming. You're becoming like Christ. Romans 8 even extends that to our physical bodies. Not only our characters, not only our minds, but one day we are going to have a glorified physical body that is going to look more like Jesus's resurrection body than it looks like your body does now. We will be completely healed of all our woundedness. And we are even now in the process of being so healed.
So there it is. I do not have a fancy ending today. I just want you to think about these magnificent truths. The greatest and grandest privilege of being the Christian is that you are adopted by God the Father. The anchor of your deepest and truest identity is that you are adopted by your heavenly Father. And the environment of your healing and becoming more like your elder brother Jesus is your adoption by God the Father. John puts it in his gospel, yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. And the word right there literally means authority. You have the authority because of your family connections. You have the authority to say, I am a daughter. I am a son. I belong. Thank you, Father. Thank you. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.