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Predestined for Adoption to the Praise of His Glory
The following message is by Pastor John Piper. More information from Desiring God Ministries is available at www.desiringGod.org. The sermon text this morning is found in Ephesians 1, 1 through 6. For using the Pew Bible, that's on page 966. 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 in 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. And 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 the adoption through Christ Jesus according to the purpose of his will and the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved. I am blessed, let's pray together, indeed Rod Ellison is blessed Lord and has been a blessing and I thank you for Rod. This Sunday probably would not be happening, but we're not for your grace in his life 14 years ago. And so I give public thanks for the grace of God poured out into life of Rod Ellison to conceive the Micah Fund and then Kyle Hastings to conceive the Lydia Fund and dozens and dozens of families in this church to express as an overflow of their inheritance in Christ the love of adoption. And so now Lord come please help me be faithful to this text in talking about your adopting of us in Christ Jesus and then give me a prophetic anointing to bend this truth horizontally into the lives of our people for the sake of dreaming adoption dreams. And may the ripple effect Lord be beyond Bethlehem as it already is for thousands of miles and hundreds of years I pray come and be our teacher now. I ask in Jesus name amen. Adoption is one of the greatest weightiest realities in the universe and I say universe instead of world because it's greater than the world and longer than the world before the world will be there after the world. I have three goals in this message. This morning one is that all of us married single old young will consider and enjoy and embrace the wonder of being adopted by God into his everlasting family of joy at the cost of his son's life. Number two that we will give generously toward the Micah Fund minority infant child adoption can help Micah fund and Lydia fund let youths be delivered from institutions by adoption. Lydia when you walk out those doors at the end put something in the basket, if you want to write a check make it to Bethlehem we'll divide it right in half to each of those groups. That's my second goal that you would now and for many years to come regularly support the ministry of adoption through this church and third goal that couples and those who will become couples will seriously pray about the possibility of adoption in your family. Those are my three goals. Now let's go to verse five of Ephesians 1 where you will see the text. Ephesians 1 verse 5, actually a little bit before verse 5 in the ESV it's divided this way and I think this is right. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will to the praise of his glorious grace. Now if you've been with us through Romans 9 to 11 or 1 to 11 which most of you haven't because we've been there for six years and you've come since then but if you ended with us then you remember verse 36 of chapter 11 which says for from him through him and to him are all things to him be glory forever and ever. It's a great God-exalting consummation of Romans 1 to 11. I'm going to take verse 36 from him through him and to him are all things and lay it on top of verse 5 of Ephesians and look at Ephesians 1-5 through that verse which does not distort it, it illumines it and what we see when we do it is adoption is from him through him and to him it's crystal clear in this verse that that's the case so let's go there and look at those three things that's the outline of the exposition. Just it is from him, adoption is from him, in love he predestined us for adoption so you can see that adoption originates from somewhere namely it originates in the predestining plan of God before the world was God decides that there will be the adoption of people into his family, do you ask when did that happen? When did God predestined us to adoption? The answer is given in verse 4, he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that's when it happened that we should be holy and blameless before him in love so God did not create a world and then wringing his hands and against all of his foreknowledge and plan watch a humanity through sin orphan themselves into sin and unbelief and rebellion and then think oh now what will I do, oh I will find a way to adopt them through my son that is not the way it happened. Our adoption through Jesus Christ was conceived and planned before the creation of the world and nothing took God off guard. There were no planned bees, that is not the kind of God we worship. Your adoption into his family through Christ was planned before the world was which has some implications. My adoption does not rest on my fitness or my worth or my distinctives that God recognized liked and decided to include in his family, therefore my adoption is not fragile, tenuous, uncertain, it is firm, sure and unshakable as is the eternal purpose of God, oh that you might enjoy today on this Father's Day your adoption by your heavenly Father into his family according to an everlasting purpose which is unshakable then and unshakable now. That's point number one, adoption is from him, point number two, adoption is through him. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, through Jesus Christ. What does that mean that we are adopted into God's family and he becomes our Father through Jesus Christ. It means that we had to be died for in order for this to happen. Look at verse seven, in him that is in Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace. In order for God to adopt us, in eternity he looked upon us in our sin, he saw us sinners. Then in his eternity he looked upon his crucified and risen son, then because of that sin and a crucified son he says in eternity I predestined that those will be because of him, my children. I will take sinners into my family because I designed that my son die on their behalf. So through the death of the Son our sins are forgiven, the justice of God is satisfied, the wrath of God is removed, the smiling face of a Father appears and we are folded into a family of everlasting joy because of Christ, not because of us. Verse three, adoption is to him, it is from him by predestination, it is through him by the blood of Jesus. God did not adopt cute little children, he adopted rebels, ugly, rebellious, diseased, contaminated, corrupt because of Christ, third, why, to what end, unto what? Let's read it again. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will to the praise of his glorious grace, literally to the praise of the glory of his grace. The reason that God ordains that we need salvation and that he provide a sacrifice that he might adopt unworthy, ugly, distorted, corrupt, diseased, unattractive children into his family is so that the praise would go to the glory of grace, not to the glory of shrewd pickings. It was a cute baby, I got a healthy baby, I got a smart baby. God chose the likes of us before the foundation of the world, indeed he ordained that through the fall there would be the likes of us that the Son would need to die for so that when all praise arises to the Father it would arise in its apex to the glory of grace. Adoption exists, the way it exists in God's plan that we might spend eternity as adopted unworthy children praising grace. That's what it says, he predestined us unto adoption unto the praise, not of the glory of any old thing, but the glory of grace. You should be blown away by the grace of God that you are a child of God. Are you, do you just want to run out into a day like this and click your heels of adopted? I'm adopted, the likes of me with my failures. I'm adopted at the cost of the death of the Son of God. How can we not sing amazing grace? That's the end of my exposition, now I want to take those three truths. Adoption is from him, through him and to him and bended out horizontally now in relationship to adopting children and I have five applications and here they are. Number one, we adopt a child into a family not for our own glory, but for God's glory. God adopted us to the praise of the glory of his grace, therefore we adopt to the praise of the glory of his grace. You know the devil has another way of interpreting God imitation. You know how he did it in the Garden of Eden and how he does it even today? He would say it something like this. God adopted for his own glory, so you adopt for your own glory, right? That's imitation, that's exactly what the devil said to Eve, and it's a lie clever. So shrewd is the devil. You want to imitate God? Take yourself to center of the universe, the Bible does say imitate God, Ephesians 5-1, we imitate God like this. God does everything for the glory of God, therefore we should do everything for the glory of God. If you buy into the skewed interpretation of imitation, then you will perish. Some people stumble over God's centeredness in adoption and salvation. They say, "How can it be loving for God to do everything for himself?" Wouldn't be loving if I did everything for myself and my glory. If I said Bethlehem is all about the glory of John Piper, you would or should leave. But God says that the universe is all about me, redemption is all about me. That's what God says, which is absolutely true. And a lot of people just can't hear that as loving. How can God be loving if He adopts me and says the reason He's doing it is under the praise of His glory? And here's a very simple answer. It's very profound but very simple. You were made to find your deepest satisfaction and your everlasting joy in seeing and admiring and enjoying the glory of God. Therefore, if God does not exalt that glory for your enjoyment, He doesn't love you. That's simple. It just turns your life upside down. It absolutely turns you inside out, makes you totally non-American, causes you to adopt for totally different reasons. God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the highest virtue and the most loving act. You may not copy Him in this except to make God exaltation the motive of every act of yours. Therefore, do not play off God's God's centeredness against His love. They are one. He must be the center of your life if He's to love you. Your joy must be joy in God or it won't last and therefore He must present Himself to you as the object of your joy. Second application. The first was we adopt for the glory of God, not for our own glory. Second application. In adopting and rearing a child. Your goal is not to make much of the child, but to live and teach and lead in such a way that the child grows up enjoying making much of God. Say it again. I'll try to shorten it. We do not adopt a child into our family to make much of the child, but to enable the child by faithful parenting to enjoy making much of God forever. Our aim is not to take a child's low views of self and turn them into high views of self. Our aim is to take a child with low views of God and turn them into high views of God. Our aim is not to take a child with a little sense of worth and fill him with a great sense of worth. Our aim is to take a child who by nature sees himself as a sinner of the universe and to show him that his everlasting joy comes from making God the sinner of his universe and not knowing his tiny worth, but Christ who is of infinite worth. And therefore we are very counter-cultural, counter-American, counter-educational systems. We're not about making much of our children. We are about laying our lives down that our children might make much of God. Know that we might get this. Know that Father's on Father's Day would get this, that it would go to the deepest part of your being. I will do anything to model for my child the joy of not being at the center of our own universe, but having God there. Third application. In adopting we model for children and for everyone to watch the mercy of God and the justice of God mingled in wise proportions. We model mercy and justice mingled in wise proportions. We model mercy by choosing this child. I choose you. I don't know what you're going to become. I don't know what you'll look like. I don't know whether you'll be very sick. I don't know if you'll be a rebel and break my heart. I choose you freely. You are mine. A lot of adoptions happen in this church. Side unseen. That's beautiful. That is so beautiful because that's the closest we can come to being God-like. God sees everything and so he can't choose side unseen. So he chooses the ugliest. The sickest, the most problematical. We can choose side unseen. Sometimes he said, "I wonder if he'll be healthy. I wonder if he'll be pretty. I wonder if he'll be nice to me or break my heart." Mercy reaches out and says, "I have been loved. Therefore, I will love." Period. I will love you. I will love you. I will love you no matter what. I will love you legally, relationally. You are now ours and we will love you. Hell or high water for better or for worse in sickness and in health till death do us part. I will love my child. But as soon as that merciful thing happens, we fold this little one into a pattern of just expectations. You will do this and you will not do this in this family. You will speak to your mother this way and you will not speak to your mother that way. You will go here and you will not go there. You will be home now and you will not be home then. You will hold your fork this way and not that way. That looks like a gorilla. And then there are consequences for not fulfilling the expectations called spanking. I just say to fathers here, this is an impossible calling that God has put on us to be the initiative leadership takers to mingle justice and mercy in a proportion that helps our little ones grow up to know God for who he is. God is very powerful and very angry at sin. And God is unbelievably merciful, tender, kind. Watch Jesus deal with children if you want to see God. He's holding them. He's blessing them. He's pitying the widow who lost one. He's a very tender. You're on the floor playing with your kids, your hugging, your kissing, and you're spanking. And you're pleading with God every day, you're pleading with God, you're on your face every morning. Oh God, show me how to model God here. It's impossible. I can't do this. I'm a sinner. I'm one of those lousy, no good children who got adopted and now you're calling me to model the adopter for my children, I can't pick you this out, I don't know. Father should be the most praying people in the world because of how hard our job is. So that was the third. When we adopt, we mingle mercy and justice as we try to model what it's like to come up to know God. With adopting will bring heartache, stress, and suffering just like adoption cost God the life of his son. Adoption is going to bring heartache, stress, suffering just like adoption cost God the life of his son. We are adopted through Jesus Christ. That means through a bloody sacrifice. It cost God the life of his son to make adoption work. And it will cost parents to make adoption work. I have files at home, I pulled a few of them out, letters from parents in agony, mental illness, profound physical disability, bizarre and inexplicable behavior in adopted children. And of course you know that's not unique to adoption, but it comes. We adopt with our eyes open at Bethlehem and we embrace everything because God did, God did. You knew exactly what your disobedience would cost him. Now, the reason this is possible to stand before an unseen child or a seen child and say, I take you to be mine, disabilities, diseases, rebellion, stress, pain, whatever, whatever the cost, I embrace you, I embrace the pain, that's my calling as a Christian. The Bible said through many tribulations, we will enter the kingdom of heaven and there of all kinds, this world is not called to be heaven on earth, heaven can wait. There's way too much preemptive heaven in the evangelical church, way too much heaven, which will embrace suffering now, go to the mission field, go to the inner city, take whatever stresses these weeks bring for youth ventures. Heaven can wait, it will be a spectacular reward for every loss and every pain embraced in love in this world. It's just a few seconds away by the way, a vapors breath, the Bible calls this life, short momentary affliction, Paul called his life, embrace it, embrace it, all of it. So my fifth application and closing application is that is possible because we adopt by faith in future grace. We adopt by faith in future grace. You don't know what's coming in your children, but you know his mercies are new every morning. Each day has its sufficient troubles, Jesus says, and his mercies are new every morning. There will be sufficient grace. That's the only way you can have children. I've talked to numerous in the last 40 years because I remember talking with people in my own generation before we were married or even had children. You think we should have children in the 60s and 70s with the world the way it is? And today it's worse, folks. So you think it's responsible to bring children into the world or to raise children in a world like this? I do not have a lot of sympathy with that question because I think it is rooted in massive selfishness. I think American culture looks at children as a pain in the, you know what? And therefore, let's keep ourselves unencumbered for the weekends. And our 50s, we might need a new wife when we're 52. I do not have much sympathy with people who cut their losses by not having or adopting children, I do not. There are a lot of big families in this church and here that is not a shame but a glory. In one sense, I give thanks that selfish people do not have many children because it means that breed will die out sooner. That's only half a joke because I read an article this week seriously asking the question why increasingly the percentage of teenagers who are pro-life is steadily rising. And you know what this author speculated as one of the causes? Pro-choice people don't like kids and don't have many and therefore do the math. I don't know if that's an adequate explanation but it's not far to think that if American selfish, self-centered, unencumbered, keep my retirement free, I don't want the pain of children. If they only have one or none or two, then it's not going to go well with that breed in the future. But we should say it with tears. Would it not be better if Americans discovered the future grace of God that instead of solving the problem of the future by cutting your losses with just one or two or no kids instead of cutting your losses? You say, "God is sufficient for my future with kids without kids." I know that some of you are listening to the last three minutes and saying, "I'd give anything to have a big family, anything." And I know that, and I know that, and the grace is sufficient for that as well. It's sufficient for singleness, it's sufficient for infertility, it's sufficient for two children, and it's sufficient for twelve and sixteen children, but God does not look with favor upon selfishness. Let me close by reading a letter from me to Noel, my wife, which I wrote at 11.12 p.m. November 6, 1995. A phone call had come, I was fifty years old in 1995. A phone call came to Noel saying from Phoebe, "Noelle, there's a little girl here in Georgia, and I don't know if this is of God, but I just think she's for you." That's a very presumptuous thing to say. She didn't consult me. Noel gets the scoop, puts it down, approaches me. Phoebe thinks there's a little girl that should be ours. And my response is, that is not in the plan. I raised four boys, the soccer days are over, I got books to write, ten days later I wrote this letter, this is just a part of it, it was quite a long letter, but at 11.12 p.m. on the 6th of November, the line was crossed in my heart, and it all had to do with future grace, it all had to do with future grace. Dear Noel, with confidence in the all-sufficient future grace of God, I am ready and eager to move ahead with the adoption of Talatha Ruth. Noel already had a name picked out. For years, for years. I want to thank you that during these years when your heart has yearned to adopt a daughter, you have not badgered me or coerced me, you have been wonderfully patient, you have modeled faith in the sufficiency of prayer, you have always expressed support of me and my ministry, even if we should never adopt. You have been reasonable in all our discussions and have come forth with your rationale only when asked, you have honored my misgivings as worthy of serious consideration. To my perspective, it seems to be the path that will spread a passion for the supremacy of God and all things for the joy of all peoples. I believe it is the path of the greatest love, and therefore I have confidence that God is pleased with it. I believe our eyes are open. I'll be 65 when my daughter is 15 if I live. That was not an easy thought to think about. The challenges of a 15-year-old African-American daughter in a white family with the typical challenges of teenage life at age 65 was an obstacle that had to be overcome. It could only be overcome by grace, not shrewdness. I believe our eyes are open. We have come through enough to believe that God's future grace will be sufficient. His mercies are new every morning, and there will be mercies for every weight and wonder on this new path of life. I thank God for you. I enter with you gladly on this path. Whether we live to see our daughter grown or not, we will have done well to take her in. Life is very short, whether 12 hours, like Ashley Hope, or 50 years, like me, or 76 years, or 76 years, like my father, or 94 years, like Crystal Anderson. What matters is not that we do all we might have done or all we dreamed of doing, but that while we live, we live by faith in future grace and walk in the path of love. The times are in God's hands, not ours. With this common conviction, we will, God willing, embrace our new daughter and give ourselves with all the might that God inspires in us to love her into the kingdom. May the Lord establish the plans of our hearts and bring Talatha Ruth and the future husband God already knows into deep and lasting fellowship with Christ. May she be an ebony brooch of beauty around your aging neck and a crown of purity and joy on your graying head. I love you, Johnny. I have three closing exhortations, and they are the three aims with which I began. Number one, I exhort you, Christian. Consider, admire, and embrace your adoption into God's family at the cost of the life of his son. That's the main thing that should happen in this service. Everybody leaving, standing in awe of the grace of God that adopted you at the cost of his son's life into his family. You're going to do that. If you're an unbeliever this morning and you came in here not knowing what in the world you were going to hear, hear this as an invitation. God extends to you the possibility of family membership through faith in Jesus Christ. By faith in Jesus, we are adopted, so that can happen right now. I pray it would happen for any of you who came unbelieving. And exhortation. When you leave in about three minutes, put money in the basket. Write a check to Bethlehem, designate it, mica fund or lydia fund. Actually we'll just divide it in half. And then keep on supporting those ministries. What those are, if you wonder, what is it, it is simply a means by which Christian families are helped to adopt children. It's expensive to adopt children, that's why some of you haven't considered it. You don't let that be an obstacle. The chief questions are not financial and feasibility. They are grace questions. That's the second exhortation. Be an ongoing giver to the cause of adoption. And the third exhortation is couples and couples to be. Pray and think and study about the possibility that God might be calling you to adopt. And I did it when I was 50 years old, so a lot of people are touched by this exhortation. That's Baal. And I'm going to let you be quiet for one minute without me saying anything to deal with God at those three levels. Thank you for my adoption, put in my heart what to give, and should I, should we consider this, O Lord? Thank you for listening to this message by John Piper, pastor for preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. www.desiringGod.org. There you'll find hundreds of sermons, articles, radio broadcasts, and much more, all available to you at No Charge. Our online store carries all of Pastor John's books, audio, and video resources. You can also stay up to date on what's new at Desiring God. Again, our website is www.desiringGod.org. For call us toll-free at 1-888-346-4700. Our mailing address is Desiring God, 2601 East Franklin Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55-406. Desiring God exists to help you make God your treasure, because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
John Piper | We must understand and enjoy our own adoption before we can properly grasp what it means to adopt another.