MK040 Sermons
The Gift of Adoption (Audio)
we're going to talk about the gift of adoption. And one of the families in our church is going to be able to experience that finalized. Corey and Amy Knox are going to be able to God willing to be able to finalize their adoption this coming Friday of their little boy tie. And so we're very excited for them to be able to take that step. Before we look into God's word this morning and talk about the subject this morning, I would like for you just to spend a moment with me in prayer. Many of you are aware that one of our attendees, Jane Martin, lost two individuals that were very close to her in a very tragic fire in Elberson a little over a week ago. And then the man who does the majority of the presenting to our men every Monday night and Tuesday morning, Keith Walker, who has spoken here before. His 23-year-old son lost his battle to cancer this past week. And so if you would just join me for a moment of prayer just to lift those individuals up, I would appreciate if you'd do that. God, we come to you this morning in a season of joy, one in which we are looking forward to and celebrating and remembering the significance of the birth of your son. And as we do that, God, there are people that we know and love who have very heavy hearts this morning. We just pray for them and pray that you would comfort them and be with them for Jane and the extended family of Gary and Kathy Shaid Lord. We just-- and friends, Lord, we just pray that you would walk with them as they wrestle with kind of an unexplainable tragic sudden loss that they experienced just over in the past week. And for Keith and his wife, Lynn, and their three sons and extended family and friends, Lord, as they also walk into the sadness and the loss of Caleb Lord, who was such an inspiration to many God and was used in so many amazing ways. And now is in your presence and with you and God at a place of celebration. But there's certainly a void, a very big void left here. And so we pray for the Walker family today that you would be with them and that you would bring not only your spirit, but your word and people to bring them comfort during this time as they remember and celebrate and grieve Caleb and his life at the same time rejoice that he is with you. And we ask these things in your name, Lord. Amen. Well, I heard someone recently say, make this common. It was like being back in middle school, and they were picking teens. And I switched schools when I was in eighth grade. And so that image was very fresh in my mind. And it was difficult to make that transition. And I was always the new kid. I wasn't overly athletic. At that time in my life, I was smaller than most of the boys and the girls in the class. And you can imagine why that I was usually the last one picked on the team. Now, some of you have never experienced that because of your athletic prowess or your winsome personality. You were always one of the first couple people picked on the team. And others of you, you were kind of in the middle of the pack. And if your friend was the captain, then you were like, OK, I'm going to get picked. And I'm not going to be down at the bottom of the barrel here on this one. But others of you, you hate sports. You hate team sports. You hate Jim. You load it all. It didn't really matter to you. And you really don't care at all. But for me, it was especially difficult. Being in a new place, a new setting, lots of insecurities for me personally that I wrestled with. And so that was a very challenging thing in my life. And I thought I got over that until a few years ago, I was playing flag football with a group of guys here and some guys that I knew in the neighborhood. And the guys who were doing their normal picking of sides. And about the third name that was picked was John. And all of a sudden, I was like, John, well, I never got picked third. And my ears perked up and my spirit sorted. I started to walk towards my new team only to hear the team captain say, not you, the other John. And Dev as he just crushed me once again. And I realized I still have some more work to do on that issue. But this morning, we're going to talk about this whole idea of being chosen, being chosen. And the truth of us, the truth of the matter is all of us have a desire to have someone choose you. All of us have a desire to have someone choose you. Some of you, your parents actually chose you. The rest of them, the rest of you, your parents didn't have a choice. They were stuck with you. But the truth is, we all want to be part of something. We want to be chosen to make the team. We want to be chosen when we apply for a job. We want to be chosen when there's an opportunity for a scholarship or when there's a new project or they need someone to lead the team. We want to be chosen by someone to go out on that date. Or we want to be chosen by someone to say, will you spend the rest of your life with me? And the reason being chosen is so important and significant to us, I think, is because it says how much we're valued, how much we matter, how important we are. And for some, this issue is a bigger struggle than for others. If you're really honest, you can remember times in your life when you felt rejected or abandoned by people that were supposed to love you. The result is people tend to go one direction or the other. One direction they go is being overly needy. And they can't sought healthy boundaries in relationships. And they just burn through relationships. One after another after another, they just have a bunch of real surface friendships. The other extreme is they decide I'm not going to need anyone. And they're tough, and they're determined, and they're self-sufficient, and they're self-reliant, because I'm not letting anyone get close to me. Sometimes it drives us to be successful and be accomplished and to be the leader and the head of the company and to run our own company to eliminate the pain of rejection. Well, this morning, as we look at another gift of Christmas, we're going to look at a surprising invitation. And that's the invitation to be chosen, the gift of adoption. And if you weren't here with us last week, we talked about the gift of anticipation and expectancy. And I challenge you, whether you are looking forward to the holidays with a lot of excitement, or you look to the holidays with a lot of dread, that God may have a different story for you to tell yourself this summer or this Christmas season. And that's a story of God showing up to do something in your life, just like He did several thousand years ago when Jesus arrived on this earth. Now, this morning, we're going to look at a different gift of Christmas and a gift entitled "The Gift of Adoption." As you watch the video, you heard the woman say, we decided that's just the way it was going to be. And then she smiled and said, but it wasn't. And maybe for you this morning, you've kind of concluded, that's just the way it's going to be. I'm always going to be the one kind of on the outside, always going to be the one that doesn't get included, always going to be the one that doesn't get invited, always going to be kind of the one that feels like they're on the outside out. And maybe that's because of a choice or decision that you've made in your life, or maybe it's because of the way others have wronged you. But I want to suggest to you this morning that Jesus came at a time when the world was pretty dark. There was little hope for the future. If you remember the story, what was happening at that time is the Israelite people had been promised this messiah, this rescuer, this deliverer. But they've been waiting for hundreds of years. I mean, we could hardly wait a few weeks. They were waiting hundreds of years. And if there wasn't a dark time, I don't know what it was like. And to make matters worse, they were all told they had to walk to the DMV and wait and line to be counted and didn't really know what that whole thing was all about. And in the midst of all of this, God chose someone, a young, unassuming girl, who maybe thought that's just the way it was always going to be. And God said, not this time, not this time, it isn't. In order to look at that this morning, I want to invite you to-- if you have a Bible with you to open it this morning, I apologize, our wireless connection is not working. So our guys have some Bibles, and they'll pass those out to you. I want to look at one of the writers of the stories of Jesus. There was four individuals that wrote about Jesus' life, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each of the first three, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they began the story of Jesus at his birth. John takes a very different approach. He doesn't begin at Jesus' birth. And I want us to start by taking a look at that this morning. So if you're there in your Bibles, John chapter 1, the page number is going to come up on the screen for John. If we can go back to the page number for John. There we go. And turn there with me, and let's take a look at John chapter 1, and John begins his writing with this phrase. He says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And discover a little bit later reading down that this person, the Word that he's talking about, is actually Jesus. But he uses this phrase, he says, in the beginning, does anybody know where you've heard that somewhere else in the Bible in the beginning? Where'd you hear that before? Anybody know? Genesis. Genesis 1. So John doesn't go to the birth of Jesus, or even as some of the writers do, maybe to another relative of his name, John, which is what Luke does, or even what Matthew does back in his genealogy. John goes all the way back to the very beginning. And he says, in the beginning, Jesus was there with God. Verse 2, he is with God. In the beginning, through him, all things were made without him. Nothing was made that was made. Basically said, Jesus was there in the beginning, and he helped create everything that was created. And verse 4, in him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. If you remember, in Genesis chapter 1, Jesus said that God said that he created man, and he said, he breathed into him the breath of what? Life. And he became a living being, a living soul. And he reminds us that this life was something that was there in Jesus, and that was breathed into Adam when he took his first breath. Verse 5, the light shines in darkness. The darkness is not overcoming. There was a man sent from God whose name is John, referring to John the Baptist. He came as a witness to testify about the light so that through him all might believe he wasn't the light. He only came as a witness to the light. A little bit later in the Gospel of the story of John, he talks, he's quoting Jesus, and Jesus says, I am the light of the world. So really what John's doing here is he's talking about Jesus. He's not talking about his birth. He's talking about the fact that he always existed. He was there before time with God. He was there involved in creation. He was there trying to shed light into the place of darkness when men were trying to figure out how does a person have a relationship with God? Verse 9, the true light that gives light to everyone is coming in the world. He was in the world and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. You see, when Jesus came to this earth, he came to the people that God chose, the Jewish people, his own. And he tried to offer that message of hope and that message of salvation and that message of how to have a relationship with the creator of the universe. But as the story goes on, some of them followed him. Some followed him just because of what they could get from him. Others simply, the religious leaders that influenced the masses, rejected him completely. And so he describes his response in verse 12, "Yet to all who receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become the children of God." And what John is saying here is he's saying the message that Jesus offered, not just went to the Jewish people, but it went out to everyone. And anyone that received this message, he says, "Anyone who believed in his name, not just a mental awareness, not just I know who Jesus is and I know some information about him, but those that chose to enter a personal relationship with him." He said, "They became his children, children not of natural descent, human decision, a husband's will, but children who were born of God." And Paul a little bit later uses a different word to describe this process of individuals becoming God's children. He uses the word adoption. Now, adoption in that day and in that culture was a little bit different than it is in our day and in our culture. You see, adoption was a concept that was very familiar in the Roman and the Greek cultures. As we talked a few weeks ago, marriage wasn't something that was very popular amongst the Roman culture, but often what would happen, especially among the Roman soldiers and Roman armies and Roman politicians, they would not marry, they would just take any woman that they chose whenever they wanted. But at some point in time in their lives, they realized they were going to need someone to take care of them and to help them as they were getting up in age. And so what a Roman citizen, often a military leader or a politician, what he would do is he would identify a young man, not a child, but a young man, maybe in his late teens and early twenties, that he would choose to adopt. Often it was someone who was maybe in a situation of poverty, someone who did not have much for themselves. And he would go to this young man and he would invite him to become his son. And a few things happened if the individual took up this offer that was given to him. If he had any debts that he had incurred over time, the father that was about to adopt him took care of all the debts they were all taken care of. In order to become an adopted son, you had to walk away from your old way of life and enter a completely new way of life. Another thing that happened is when you became an adopted son, you became the heir, meaning all that the father owned became yours. You can see why Paul grabbed hold of this metaphor, this imagery, because of how much, how clearly it pictures what happens when a person places their faith in Jesus. You see, when a person places their faith in Jesus, the Bible says that their sin, the debt that they owe, which we sang about earlier, the debt being their sin, that they have to do something about, get rid of, wipe away, somehow clear the slate so that they can have a relationship with God. The debt that they owed is completely taken care of and paid for by the blood of Jesus. Not only is the debt taken care of, but they're invited to leave their old way of life and begin a new relationship, a new way of life with their father, the God of the heavens. And lastly, all that God promises and all that God says is for those who are His children. They become heirs of, not because they earned it, not because they worked for it, not because they were born to that family, simply because the father chose to adopt them. And with that concept in mind, I'd like for us to take a look at a couple passages in Scripture that talk about this concept of adoption. The next one I'd like for you to turn to is in Romans 8. Romans 8, you're in the book of John, so just turn Acts and then Romans. Romans 8, and Paul says this in verse 14. He says, "For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God." Now to understand a little bit of what Paul's talking about, you have to go back and read the verses beforehand, but he talked about those individuals who place their faith in Jesus, they become one of God's own. They are God's children, and God's Spirit leads them. Verse 15, "The Spirit you received does not make you slave so that you would live in fear, rather the Spirit received, brought your adoption to sonship, and by Him we cry, Abba, Father." What Paul says is when you become one of God's children, it's not because you're not invited into a relationship but there's a list of rules, there's a list of regulations, and you feel like you're a slave, like you're in bondage. He said, "You are a son." And I thought, "What is that Spirit of adoption?" I think it's the sense that God chose you. That you're one in by God, that you're incredibly valuable to Him, and that you matter to Him. That you matter to Him. You know, we live in a culture today that has a lot of expectations for you to matter to someone. For teenage girls, they're taught that they have to look a certain way to matter to someone. For teenage guys, they have to accomplish something to matter or appear to be a certain way to matter to someone. Sometimes we have a sense that we have to do certain things or live a certain way to matter to our mother or to our father. Our expectations that our spouse has for us that, maybe on what we can accomplish or even seem reasonable. And God says, "No, I chose you, and I invited you into a relationship with me." And it says, "And by Him we cry, 'Abba, Father.'" It's the picture of a little child running into their father's arms crying, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." Because that father has his arms open wide, and there's nothing that's going to take away from them running into their arms. The result of that is that you are adopted for a lifetime. Not just for a period of time, not just until you make a mistake, not just until you drift away. You will belong to Him for a lifetime. He says there in verse 17, he says, "The Spirit testifies with our Spirit that we are God's children." Are the times you don't feel like you belong? Are the times you make choices when you drift away, when you wander away? Absolutely, but what does this produce? Incredible security. You know, we live in a culture and a world that just feels rejected at every turn. We talked over the last month about the whole issue of husbands and wives that reject one another and it results in a divorce. And kids who walk away from parents, students who reject one another because they don't fit in. The truth is we can't put our security in people because people will fail us, but God says, "You are always mine, and nothing will change this." And if you've placed your faith in Jesus, you are a part of the ultimate in-group with Him, and nothing will ever change that. So why does God choose you? Why does He choose you? Well, if you turn over to the book of Ephesians, let's take a look at what Paul says in the book of Ephesians. Here in Romans, just turn a few more books towards the end there and you'll be in the book of Ephesians. In Ephesians 1 it says, "For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight." And then it says, "In love, He predestined us for adoption to sonship." In love, He predestined us to adoption for sonship. You know, the whole idea of predestined is an idea of marking something out in advance. One of our family traditions is to cut down a live Christmas tree. It's not something that I grew up with. I grew up with a fake Christmas tree. But my wife, when we got married, we merged some of our traditions. Well, I don't know that we merged many of them, but that's another story. But anyway, so now we have a live Christmas tree every year. And so one of our experiences is to go down and cut down this Christmas tree. And as we, for a number of years, we would go out sometime in early December. It seemed like invariably, when the day to do it, it was like 25 degrees. There was like 30 mile an hour winds, you know. And I was like numb by the time we got halfway across the field. You know, that was just kind of my experience. You know, I'm like the one that's always cold and so it was not very pleasant experience. So when I discovered the possibility of tagging a tree in advance when it's warm and sunny and it's a beautiful day, I was like, "Oh, this is a gift from heaven," you know. But the experience of tagging it is a very challenging experience in my family. Because we generally get there, we get out of the car, and my son says the first tree we see, "Okay, that's a good one, let's take that one home," you know. And my wife and daughter are like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no." So we have to walk and examine every tree, you know, on the whole farm. You know, that's one of the criteria. And then the next step is you have to pick one out. And then you have to remember that one you picked out and remember what it looks like, because you now have to walk the farm a second time and compare every tree to make sure there's not a better one than that tree for the tree that you're going to pick. Some of you are letting us smile like you know exactly what this experience is like, you know. And when we find the tree, then we put the tag on and put our name on. That tree is marked out by us. We picked it out, you know. Why do we pick it out? Well, because my wife and daughter like it, that's usually why we picked it out, you know. And because it's the right size, it'll fit and it's the right shape, you know. It's not real fat on the wine or Charlie Brown tree, you know, something like that. So, you know, those are the criteria, but we marked that tree out so that when we go back and it's time, we get the one we marked out in advance. And that's what the whole idea behind this predestined is. Now look at the verse 5. It says, "In love, He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ." You know when this happened? It says there in verse 4 that it happened before time began. Before time began, God decided who He's going to choose to have a relationship with. And then He marked them out and said, "That one, when it's time, they're going to become my sons." And my daughters. You know, and the amazing thing is, is there's nothing you can do to make that happen. You can't be good enough to make it happen. You can't be kind enough to make it happen. You can't be religious enough to make it happen. You can't be generous enough to make it happen. God does it, why? Because He loves you. Because He loves me. You know when I think about the people in my life, the relationships that are closest to me. You know my wife who I've chosen to marry because of my love for her. I'm amazed that she's responded and expresses the same towards me. But I think that God knows everything about me. Even before I wanted anything to do with Him. And He still chose me. And we tell the couples that we do premarital counseling with. You've got a lot to learn about each other. No, we know everything about each other. Like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." They don't know what they're talking about. Because that's what happens, right? You marry someone, you think you know them, and then you're like, "Oh, that was not the person I married." "Oh, where did that come from?" "Okay, I said I'd love all of them. I said I'd stay with them." But God loves us knowing everything there is to know about us. Knowing the fact that we're going to choose Him and we're going to drift away. We're going to choose Him and we're going to still do sinful things and desire the things that show that we love something else at times more than we love Him. And He still loves us. And He chose us and invited us into that relationship with Him. So when did this process happen? Well, turn with me to one final passage, Galatians chapter 4. Galatians chapter 4, just back a couple books from the book of Ephesians. Galatians chapter 4 verse 4, it says this. It says, "But when the set time had fully come." Well, the time had fully come. Remember what God did is God chose in advance and He marked out those that were going to be His. Those that were going to enter into this relationship as sons and daughters of God. And then there was this time when everything was ready. Everything was ready. At our small group the other night we shared some of our family traditions that we grew up with and then we talked about how some of those traditions that we grew up, we've changed some of those traditions. One of the traditions that my wife has modified is that her mother is a list person and she has a list and everything on that list has to be done. And before you go to bed the night before Christmas. And so you can't take something off the list, can't shorten the list. Everything on the list has to be done. So you can imagine what this meant for my mother-in-law. Does that mean she's up till all hours of the night doing things because everything has to be done before Christmas get around. And if you knew the story of everything that was happening in the world at the moment in time when Jesus arrived. They were like, "Wow, that was just the right time." Everything had happened, the world was set up for Jesus to show up on the scene. Kind of just gives you a moment to kind of take a step back and pause and like, "Maybe God really is in charge of all of this, including my life." But what Paul says, he says, "When the time had come just the right time, what did God do? He had sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those under the law." This whole concept of the law and redeeming those under the law is something that he talks about all throughout this book of Galatians. Because he wanted to free men from the rules and the expectations of things that they had to do to have a relationship with God. And he wanted them to discover that there's another way, there's a different way. And that way comes only through Jesus. Why? Verse 5, "So that we might receive adoption to sonship." You see how Paul uses this phrase over and over and over again? Because he wants those who are followers of Jesus to know that there is something unique and amazing and significant about this relationship they have with the God of the universe. They are adopted as his sons. And he marked out in time when it was going to happen. And then he planned the event so that God would send his son right at that moment of time. And then in your life and in your story, God brought people into your life. God brought you to the place where you did not have anywhere else to turn. God brought you a place where you understood the message of the gospel. And you already say, "I know I need Jesus today. I invite him into my life." And today, I choose him as my Savior and my Lord. But he says in verse 7, he says, "So you're no longer a slave, but God's child. And since you are his child, God has made you also an heir." I don't really know what being an heir of God really means. But somehow if God is in charge of everything and owns everything and... somehow I inherit a part of that. And again, I'm not quite really sure what that means and look like. But my guess is it's pretty amazing. That would be my guess. The result is that you have a relationship with your heavenly Father for all of eternity. For all of eternity, he's always there with you. He will never leave you and never abandon you. Psalm 2710, David said this, "Even if my Father and Mother abandon me, the Lord will take me in." And maybe for you today, as I've been talking about this concept of adoption, I've been talking about what God has marked down in advance and talked about how much God longs for all relationship with you. And then he invites you to receive Jesus as your Savior so that you can have a relationship with the God of the heavens. Maybe today is a day where it all makes sense. It all clicks. When you rise, that's the relationship I don't know that I have, but I want that relationship today. I want to have a guarantee, a sense of confidence that no matter what happens in my life, no matter what I go through, no matter where my relationships go in my life, that I will have a Father in heaven who knows me and loves me. And it's always there with me. This is not a relationship that you can do anything to obtain. You can't be baptized and obtain this relationship. You can't complete catechism or be confirmed and obtain this relationship. You can't be a good person and obtain this relationship. You simply have to say, "Jesus, I receive this gift that you have for me." Maybe this morning you received that gift. And so the opportunity for you is to not only be grateful for that gift and walk away with a sense of being loved and accepted no matter what, but for you then to be able to offer that gift to someone else. Did you hear the verse she quoted in the video? She said, "The spirit of the Lord, sovereign Lord is upon me, because the Lord is in mind me." To do what? Proclaim good news, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom, and to release from darkness for the prisoners. Maybe this Christmas season, the gift of adoption, is not so much a gift that you receive, but it's a gift that you offer. It's a gift where you choose someone and offer something to them for no other reason than simply because of God's choice and His love for you. What's that going to look like for you this year? Maybe as a family you kind of pull some funds together and you give a gift through Samaritan's Purse or through Hope International organizations that make a difference around the world. Maybe you give a gift of your time and you serve at Water Street Rescue Mission or one of the women's shelters in the Lancaster area. Maybe you adopt someone into your family as a grandparent, an aunt, or an uncle who doesn't have any family and will be alone around the holidays. For those of you with families, it may be hard for you to fathom, but there are people down your street, people in your office building, there are students in your class that will be all alone this Christmas. Maybe it's a chance for you to give something to them and they wonder why. The only reason you can offer them is because God loves you. Maybe adopt a child this year through Compassion International. I don't know what that's going to look like for you, but I just want you to challenge you that if you receive this gift, if you have this overwhelming sense of being adopted as one of God's children, a son and a daughter of his, that you say, how can we offer that gift to someone else this year? And what does that look like for me? What does that look like for our family? What does that look like for us to them? I want to close with this song that just reminds us about the significance and the power and the amazing gift that the gift of adoption is. Adoption of children in our family has taught me especially. An adopted child is no less a son or a daughter than my natural born children. And to apply that in spiritual sense, I have learned that to be a son of God makes me no less his son than his true son. Adoption has changed my life, but it's also changed my relationship with my father in heaven. [MUSIC PLAYING]