Galatians 3:26-4:7

Amen.

Amen.

Go ahead and grab a seat and go ahead and grab your bibles and turn to Galatians chapter three, verses 26 we'll be there till chapter seven and verse four.

If you don't have a Bible with you or you don't own a Bible, there should be one somewhere in a pew somewhere around you that looks like this says the story on top of it.

If you don't have one, look, you're welcome to take that and make it yours.

You can write your name on the front of it and everything.

This can be your Bible.

The one thing that I would recommend if you do that or even if you don't do that, is to when you get home, take the first few pages printed on glossy paper in the front, read through those.

What that is is basically kind of the overall story, the whole story of the entire Bible summarize and just a handful of pages and so I'd encourage you to read through that and then I'd love to discuss that with you further after you've read that.

I would love to be able to talk that through with you also, if you're a guest with us today, I'm going to say this earlier, but I didn't.

If you would, do me a favor and grab a connect card and abuse somewhere around you and just fill out a little bit of information there.

You can either put that in the offering plate at the end or if you would like to have a free coffee Mug, I would give that to you if you'd do me the favor of bringing that back to me, handed it to me at the end of the service and I can give you a coffee mug and exchange.

It's just my way of saying, please give me the connect card.

It's really all that is.

And uh, and so plus, I love coffee.

And so I'd love to buy you a cup of coffee and put some coffee in that get to know you a little bit.

Um, as, as you're turning to Galatians chapter three.

If you're in the Pew Bible, it's in page 807 a there.

And so I want to summarize for you kind of the main idea of today, really a lot of what we just saying fits so perfectly into what we're looking at today and just that idea and that last song of turned,

turn your eyes upon Jesus and then the things of this world will just fade away when, when we start our service each Sunday with a, with prayer, that's really kind of what we're praying is that we could make our focus so much on, on Jesus that everything else that we struggle with, with just fade away.

And, and today, here's what I want you to see.

You'll see at the top of your bulletin there, um, this, this statement here, through faith in the redemption of Christ.

We are no longer slaves.

We now have God as our father.

That's kind of really the main thing I want to talk about today.

But here's, here's what I, my goal out of that for you today.

My goal for you today is that you would, you would rejoice in the fact that as children of God, we get to approach God as father.

And I, I want to show you today, my goal is to show you how beautiful and amazing and freeing and overwhelming and secure that fact is.

That if you are a child of God, how unbelievably amazing it is to have God as your father.

And if you are not a child of God, then then, well my prayers as you here today, what it means to have God as your father, that God would use that to open your heart to him and that you would become his child today.

And we'd love to talk to you more about that.

At the end of the service, there's nothing as if there's nothing more joyous as a father than having having your dad, having your children look at you and call you daddy, uh, and embrace you and express that love to you.

It's an incredible thing in our house with our three kids.

Uh, our daughter loves to play this game where she'll say, I love you more than.

And you have to take turns and you say, I love you more than Burritos.

And then, and then she'll say, I love you more than TV.

Which is when you know you are well loved by Magnolia, if she tells you she loves you more than TV.

And so the other thing our kids love to do is they'll say, they'll say, I love you more than you love me.

My response is always the same.

To them that's impossible.

There's no possible way.

And they'll go, yes it is.

And I'll say, no, no, no, no.

See I have something special.

I have a father's love for you and I don't think you can beat that.

I remember being a kid and I knew how much I loved my dad and I'm telling you, there's.

There's a special love when a father loves his child and it's just a fun way where we express love back and forth to each other.

Now I got to stop for a minute and acknowledge for some of you I'm.

I'm fully aware, for some of you, the idea of God.

His father is a difficult concept for you because your earthly father was either absent or insufficient.

And so this concept becomes difficult for you to grasp because you start to try to view God through that lens of father and you think of your father and you think of how you never, he either he was never there or how you never measured up or how he was always mean to you.

You never really felt like he loved you or all the, all this baggage that we want to bring in.

And so what I want to show you in the text today is that even if you had a good father, even if you had a great father, he's insufficient to show you the picture perfectly.

That when we look at scripture and see God his father, it is an over whelming reality in the best way possible.

Problem is God.

His father is not our starting point.

When you look at scripture, our starting point with God is not as children of God are starting.

Point Bible says in Romans Chapter Eight, that we are hostile.

Enemies against God.

In Ephesians it says that we are sons of disobedience, children of Wrath.

So listen, we don't start in a good position here.

We don't start as God's children says, something has to happen, something has to occur to change that relationship is that one thing that occurs is called adoption.

Everybody say adoption is today.

Really that's what we're looking at is the doctrine of adoption and how beautiful it is that God would take hostile enemies, children of wrath, sons of disobedience and adopt them as sons, and so what we're going to look at, what that means.

Paul in the book of Galatians has been discussing law and faith and he he's, he's talked about people who live by legalism and how that's really slavery.

It's going to prison your life to live that way and how even it's contrary to the gospel.

It's contrary to the Gospel to make Christianity this list of things you're allowed to do and this list of things you're not allowed to do, and if you, if you go buy this list and you do these things and got to love you more, but if you do these things got to love you less that Paul is arguing specifically on the attack.

On the topic of circumcision, but even really just the grand idea, the broad idea of legalism here in Galatians that this is never the way God intended us to relate to him.

This is, this is not.

We got to stop living in this legalistic view of what it means to be a child of God and we need to recognize that we are children and there's, there's, there's no more secure, more loved position than to be a child of God adopted by the father.

So as we look at this, we'll see that we are free in Christ.

We are sons of God.

Um, so if you would stand with me, let's read God's word.

Galatians chapter three, starting in verse 26, going to the seventh verse of Chapter Four, for in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.

There is neither Jew nor Greek.

There is neither slave nor free.

There is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring.

Heirs according to promise, I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child is no law is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father and the same way we also when we were children were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world, but it's always good when the Bible says, but, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons and because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into your heart, crying Aba father, so you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir through God, you may be seated.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to him was correct.

God is.

We look at your word this morning that Paul wrote, inspired by the Holy Spirit that the Holy Spirit really wrote through Paul to the churches in Galicia.

Lord, let us praise you, forgiving, forgiving us this word, would I pray that this truth would be transformative for us?

Well, we would leave here understanding what it means to be your son.

In Jesus name I pray, Lord, I need your help.

Speak through me.

Jesus Christ.

Amen.

All right, so you'll notice there's more on your bulletin then ever before.

There's a huge quote on there, and I'll be honest, I wrestled back and forth just as a rhetorical device.

I tried not to do really long quotes because I understand that it's difficult to follow.

This one was just so good.

Don't read it yet.

Just hold on and let you know so that you're not reading it yet.

We're going to get to that in a minute.

I'll put it on there so you're not feeling like you need to write anything down or take a picture of the screen or anything like that because, uh, this is gonna.

Help build some truth that I want you to see.

The first point you're going to see there though is the law reveals the holiness of the father and our need for redemption.

The law reveals the holiness of the father and our need for redemption.

We actually don't understand.

The law is not bad when when Paul is talking in the book of Galatians, he.

He's not saying the law is a bad thing.

He's saying the misuse of the law is a bad thing.

We need to understand why the law happens.

We talked about this before, why?

He says why then the law and then it reveals some things, so one of the things that reveals is the holiness God.

See it's.

It is an impossible standard.

When we look at the law, when we read the law and he even goes into this in the book of Galatians that listen, if you try to live your life completely by law, you're going to be cursed because you're not going to be able to do it.

You're going to fall short.

You try to live by the law.

You're not going to measure up.

You're gonna mess up at some point and so don't try to live just by the law.

Let the law play its role and its.

It talks about that role of the law, but one of the things I want you to see is that it.

It shows us how holy and amazing God is.

That when we see that holiness, we see that we don't measure up and so it reveals not only God's holiness but our need for redemption.

Because, but here's the beauty, is that through adoption we put on the holiness of God.

His righteousness is imputed.

Is, is the kind of the$10 word for imputed upon us that that we, we take on his righteousness when we are adopted by him.

That we take on his identity of righteousness.

That our sin is no longer what identifies us, but his righteousness.

The grammar in this language here about putting on indicates purposeful action on our part.

It seems to reference a Roman rite of passage where a boy when he comes of age, according to his father on March 17th of each year, would have the ceremony where he would take off his own identity as a child and he would put that away with his childish things and even often make a burnt sacrifice.

Towards a Roman God, in other words, there's no going back to that.

And so when you, when you hear that, think about the times when Paul and other other, uh, letters says things like put off the old and put on the new.

Because once the childhood Toga, the childhood things were gone, the father would then deem him a man by giving him this Toga that identified him as his son was full rights as a son.

And we put on like that.

We put on the righteousness of God.

Um, some historians have referenced this as, as such a, an identity changing moment.

Uh, that is really when everything changed for you as a young man.

You think about it, western culture, modern culture today.

Uh, we, we've done a way with rites of passage for manhood.

You talk to young men and you ask them, how do you know when you're a man?

And none of us know how to know that anymore.

We don't have these rights of passage given to us that declare us at some point.

We have this beautiful moment where a young man could know from his father.

I'm a man now and he gets the full rights of Sun.

What we need to understand is this whole process is part of how we get freed from the law.

We were once captive to the law, but we are now captivated by his love.

Jesus says that to this who believed his name, he gave the right to become the children of God.

That when we believe in Jesus, we have the right to become children of God.

We get to put off the old ways and put on the new this phrase, son of God has been used twice before in this letter of Galatians, both times as a proper title for Jesus, but now it starts to get applied to us.

And this is part of what's so amazing about adoption is what you understand is the law can't save us and it was never intended to.

It was never intended to save us.

Legal listened to me.

Legalism in any form will not earn you anything from God.

Now where I grew up, one of the hardest ways to share the gospel with people, uh, is to help them understand that they won't be good enough.

See, and in, in the New Orleans area, everyone almost it seems, believes they're going to happen.

And the reason they believe it if you ask them is because in the end I'm just hoping the good outweighs the bad, right?

And in the end I'm hoping that I've done more good things than I've done bad things.

Do you realize that's a form of legalism that's a form of you being good enough?

And, and part of the whole purpose of the law is to illustrate that you'll never be good enough, especially when you take the 10 commandments and apply them through Jesus hermeneutics.

In the sermon on the mount, you look at the 10 commandments and, and here's what Jesus says.

He says, you've heard it said, thou shalt not murder.

Appreciate that you haven't killed anybody.

Here's a gene to get.

If you and your heart have wanted harm against someone, which I do every day in traffic, then you have committed murder in your heart.

To Jesus doesn't let you off the hook.

Jesus.

Jesus shows you Jesus doesn't change the law.

He shows you the law.

Really diagnosis your brokennness just how broken you are.

He says, you've heard it said, do not commit adultery.

Appreciate that you've kept it in your marriage, but Jesus says, as you've had even a lustful thought in your mind, you've already committed adultery, right on and on and on and on.

He goes, and what the law does is reveal just holy and incredible and amazing God is, and then how much we need holiness, whether we're not good enough, but see, the problem is when we think of holiness, so often we think of like moral behavior, like a holy person as a person that just like behaves right?

That just does things that they're supposed to do.

It's just this good behavior thing which you need to get is the word holy means set apart, different than and and really, it's hard to define the word holy accurately without using God as the definition.

God is the very definition of holiness, and so when the Bible says, be holy, automatically you realize, I'll never be holy.

This is the purpose of the law, to show you how holy God is and how you show you how unholy you are and how much you need him, and that's bad news unless he does something about it, and here's the thing.

When we understand holiness, truly will understand just how good and amazing of a thing it is.

When I say good, I don't mean like well behaved or just nice.

I mean like it's the most desirable thing in the world, in the universe.

Cs Lewis said this, how little people know who think that holiness is dull?

When one meets the real thing, it is irresistible.

See, when you look at the law, what, what, what?

I want you to see what the word wants you to see.

It's like David looks at the law.

I would encourage you to read psalm 1:19.

It's a love letter to the Bible and David talks about how much he loves the law and you think about loves the law.

If you have ever anybody ever like thought, I'm going to read the Bible, the whole Bible this year, then you get to like leviticus and you're like, I can't.

I can't keep going like this.

Try.

This is just so boring.

And then you read the David talks about how much he loves law and you're like, David, you reading the same thing I'm reading?

Yeah, well, because I read about like what kind of clothes are you going to wear or what kind of foods you can eat and all these different things and I'm not sitting here going, oh, it just keeps me up at night and just so happy.

I love it.

I want to eat it, but when you realize what it's doing and it's showing you how unbelievably amazing God is, you'll realize how much you really needing and how much of a blessing he is to you, but unless he does something than it is just bad news.

The good news is that redemption second point changes the relationship of slaves to sons.

This is the crux of the passage here, that our relationship changes when we are redeemed by Christ.

I want to read verses 28 of chapter three, verse five of Chapter Four.

There is neither Jew nor Greek.

There is neither slave nor free.

There is no male and female for you are all one in Christ Jesus, and if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring.

Heirs according to promise, I mean that the heir, as long as he's a child is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father and the same way we also when we were children were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world, but when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.

So how does this relationship change?

How do we go from being hostile enemies and slaves with full rights to being sons with full rights of son ship?

Well, when we look at Galatians, we looked at the law, tells us some things about the law says the law is described first as a jailer, as an prisoner, that it puts us in a prison in a sense in verses three slash 22 through 23.

If if, if if done wrong, it imprisons us in the law by itself will only show you how short you fall and it's like a prison.

Then it says it's like a guardian or a tutor in versus chapter three, verses 24 and 25 and then and then here it it.

It says manager or trustee don't explain kind of enrollment culture.

Those, those relationships have guardian and trustee or manager it.

If your father was wealthy enough to have an inheritance and have servants in his household enrollment culture, then you were raised till about 14 years of age by a guardian, by, by as a servant, a slave, a guardian, someone who was in charge of the elementary principles of your life.

They're the ones that taught you how to read.

They're the ones that taught you if you were taught that they're the ones that taught you how to go about the day and your manners and your chores and and they're the person you reported to on a regular basis.

They were your guardian, they were your school teacher.

They were the ones who really shaped you the way that the father told them to shape you, and then around 14 years of age or so, you would then be handed to a trustee, which at this point you're now getting a little more freedom.

You have a little more freedom to choose what you want to do with your day, how you want to go about your day, and you even have some access to your financial resources as a son, but every idea you have really has to run through a trustee.

So when, when Paul says that when you are a child, you really no better than the slave.

You're not.

Even though it says, even though you own everything, you still are subject to whatever this servant tells you to do.

Right?

And, and under the law, this is kind of that what happens, right?

We're, we don't really get to experience freedom under the law.

We can get to be told what to do in, um, in his book raising kids God's way.

Gary[inaudible] talks about this in a sense of that when we raise our children, as we start out as disciplinarians teaching generic kids not to put a fork in the electric socket, does your kids what to eat, what to say, how did they have manners and, and we and we, we really have to dictate every moment of a child's life in the very beginning, don't we?

And then he says, we transitioned to trainers where we're teaching them really how to do things and we're walking life with them.

And then as they get a little bit older and we start to become coaches and they start to make some decisions on their own.

But we're still coaching that.

And what I love about the premise of Gary as book is, is if we've done all those things right, right.

If we've been good disciplinarians, good trainers, good coaches, then one day when our kids grow up and move out of the house, we get to be their friend, but he says that if you haven't done those things right, you won't really get to be their friends when they move out of the house because you'll still be trying to coach all their stupid decisions.

And so if we do those things right, we get to have this relationship as friends.

Well, Jesus told his disciples that he no longer called them service, but he calls them friends in John Fifteen.

Redemption changes our relationship with God from being slaves and servants.

Two, sons and friends,

but we're not biological children.

Would you understand?

We don't start out as children of God, right?

We started out as children of wrath of sons of disobedience.

So again, something has to happen.

A transaction has to occur where we go from being children of wrath and sons of disobedience to becoming children of God and in God's timing.

He sent his son to redeem us from the law so that we can experience the full rights of son ship through adoption.

The law was given to us by God as a guardian, as a trustee, as a manager of our lives, to reveal how much we fall short and to give us a way to live, but that changes when we become adopted by God and until until that happened,

we stay slaves at best,

but on the father's perfect timing, which I'm not going to go into in depth today because I've already made the decision.

We're going to come back to that particular verse at Christmas time, a advent and talk about the timing of God sending his son to adopt us where it says Jesus was born of woman and born under the law.

Here's what I want to point to you in this today.

So if you were a biological son of a wealthy Roman man, you would go under that process of going under the Guardian and an the trustee, and then on March 17th, one year when you were around 25 years of age or so, but it wasn't a.

It wasn't just age based.

It had to be when the father said the father had to say he's ready on March 17th, you would have this incredible ceremony that we talked about right where you take off the old robe and the other things and you put on the new one.

But what about this?

What if?

What if you're not?

What if you're not the son of a wealthy Roman man and you have no opportunity to inherit?

What if you're a slave?

What if you're so poor that there's no way to inherit anything that you can't take off an old Toga and get rid of it because it's you don't have other togas.

Your father doesn't have something to give you or what if you don't have a father in your life?

He died at war, he abandoned you.

And then what if this wealthy Roman father, his son dies at war, his son, he disinherited him, he's a disappointment to him and so he disinherits than which you can do with a biological son, you could say, I no longer call him my son and he'll never received anything that's mine.

And then he goes, man, I gotta I gotta pass this on to somebody is where adoption would come in.

And so here's what I want you to see.

What would happen is they would go through a lengthy process of adopting you, you, you would already be of age and he would already see that you're man enough to take on the responsibilities and receive the benefits.

And so we'd go through this lengthy process and he would adopt you in and probably also on March 17th, he'd pull you in and you'd take off that old Toga and you just set aside those old things and you would receive your new identity and you would put on the identity of as his son.

Now, here's what I want you to see when Paul is writing this to Roman culture, I want you to see some things about Roman adoption that you got to get that, that there's applications here that Paul wants you to make that aren't explicit in the text, but are implicit culturally, so there are two main.

I divide the benefits into two main benefits of adoption, justification and security justification in two ways, right?

One, if catch this, follow this.

If if someone you as a son, as their air before they could adopt you, they had to take care of all your financial debt.

They had to be able to afford to, to pay for your debt, and so when they adopt you, you come in completely debt free.

You don't owe anybody anything.

Will think for a second like we even saying about that.

His blood covers us, that his blood paid our debt.

Do you realize as hostile enemies against God, we have an insurmountable debt to pay God himself, that when God saves us, he saves us from himself, from his wrath.

Because we have in, we have incurred through our sinfulness an insurmountable debt that we will never be able to pay.

This is why the law is a cursed by itself because will work and work and work and work, but listen to me, you're good will never outweigh your bad

ever.

I was doing street evangelism in New Orleans one day in the seventh ward, which is not a safe area to walk around and you got to check in in the neighborhood with somebody watching over the neighborhood

and

I was doing it with a professor of mine in seminary, so he.

He had a reputation there so people knew that if you were with him you were good and so we went into the seventh ward and I'm talking with this guy on his front porch and I said to him, we were talking and he said, man is at the end of things.

I'm just hoping my good outweighs my bad.

I said, well man, what if I told you that I know for certain you're good will not outweigh your bad.

We raised his shirt and he had a pistol tucked in the front of his pants.

He said, well, to me, and you got a problem, and I started backtracking real quick and I thought, hold on, hold up.

I said, well, this is true about me.

This is true about me as well.

My goodwill not outweigh my bad either.

I said, I can tell you I know that about you because it's true of all of us.

Obviously I made it through that day.

He didn't receive Christ that day, but it's something that we've got to understand.

We've got to understand that we have an insurmountable debt and the beauty of adoption is the debt has to be paid before you can be adopted.

Yeah.

Jesus paid the debt himself on the cross.

He paid your debt on the cross to clear that so that you could come with them.

The second way that that the father would have to justify you before he could adopt you as he would have to work out all your criminal charges, have you had, if you had any record, if you had any criminal charges, if anyone had anything against you, whether it be financial or criminal in any way the father had to settle that before he could adopt you.

Isn't this a beautiful picture of the Gospel?

The way that Jesus adopts us?

He doesn't just say, Hey, asked me into your heart.

He doesn't just say, believe in me.

He doesn't just say, do you love me?

He doesn't just say, do you want to go to heaven?

He says, I'm going to pay for everything.

You've racked up an insurmountable debt and your criminal, your rap sheet is long.

You'll never be able to clear all this, but I can

so I'm going to clear it.

So Jesus, like a good father wipes it away.

When we are adopted by the father, we have no more debt to him and there's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Do you realize that's a legal term of justification?

It's like going before the judge being accused of every bad thing you've ever done and the judge going completely declare you innocent of all things because your father took care of it so that he could adopt you not only justification but security.

There's there was no more secure inheritance than an adopted son.

If you were a biological son and you are a disappointment to your father, he could do two things depending on how bad of a disappointment you were.

If you were like the prodigal son and you had run away and squandered everything in such a way that brought such shame and dishonor on your father and your home, he had every legal right to drag you in a town square and invite everybody to help him stone you to death

publicly.

It was his legal right to do that to you.

If you were.

If you were such a dishonor, such a disappointment, then he had every legal right to kill you, but if you weren't so bad that he wanted to kill you, here's what he could do.

He could just disinherit you.

He said, I'm not going to kill you, but you're on your own.

I, I can't.

I can't take responsibility for you anymore because you bring such shame to my name and so you got to leave

and nothing of mine will ever be yours.

If you are a biological son, here's what's really great about Roman law for an adopted son.

If you are an adopted son, no matter what you did, listen to me.

No matter what you did, the father could not kill you.

The father could not disinherit you.

It once he went through the whole process of adopting you, he's paid your debts.

He's cleared your criminal record.

He's brought you in.

You've gone through the ceremony, you've put on his identity in his toga.

You've done that whole process.

Now you're more secure than ever.

Listen to me, this is this.

You cannot live by legalism.

You cannot live by the law.

This is never what God desired.

He got, he got desired for you to be his son,

his child.

Now, why does he say son and not sons and daughters?

Well, because it was the son who got the inheritance, but he clears things up, right?

What does he say?

He tells us that there in verse Twenty Six, there is neither Jew nor Greek.

There is neither slave nor free.

There is no male and female for you are all one in Christ Jesus, so not only

does our relationship with God change, which is the most important thing, we go from being hostile enemies and slaves because here's the big contrast, right enrollment adoption.

You would pick a young man that you saw potential in.

You would see something in him and you would go, this is a.

This is a young man.

I'm willing to let take my name.

This is a young man because of his character, because of his work ethic, because of his integrity and his honor, I'm going to let him take on my name.

The difference here is when God sees you before adopting you, you are hostile enemies.

Sons of disobedience, children of Wrath, and his grace is so scandalous, so amazing that he pays the debt.

It clears your record, adopt.

She was his and gives you a new heart, and as we dwell and make our home and abide in his love, not in the law, in his love, it will transform awesome, and we will start to bear spiritual fruit.

Bob dwelling in him.

This is what John Fifteen tells us.

John Fifteen says that we are the buying.

He is the branches, that if we abide in him and his word and his love, we will bear much fruit, right?

Not if we try hard,

not if we memorize all the laws, not if we just be good enough, but if we dwell and make our home and the fact that we are sons and daughters of God, but as we saw in that text, it doesn't just change that

it changes our relationship with everyone else.

You see a in a day and time when cultural distinctions determined your potential.

Paul says, those things don't even come into account when it comes to being a child of God.

There is no Jew,

there is no Greek.

There's no slave.

There's no free, there's no male, there's no female.

Right?

And think about the implications of that in this culture, right?

If if you were Jewish in someone was gentile, you didn't even want to be near the other person, you couldn't go into their home without becoming unclean.

This is one of the issues that he talks about here in Galatians.

If you are a man and woman, you really couldn't have a whole lot of relationship and talk because men and women didn't talk.

Even husbands and wives didn't talk in public a lot and women were a lower class.

Romans thought Jews were lower class.

Jews thought Romans were a lower class.

Yes,

you were a slave.

Obviously you're a lower class, less

than someone who's free.

What Paul says is you could be a slave roman gentile woman and have just as much rights in the father as a wealthy Jewish man.

Is there.

Listen, it doesn't mean that those cultural distinctions go away.

I think so often when we talk about unity in the church, especially in a day and age when there's so much racial disunity in not only the country, but maybe more so in the church.

W W, W we assume that means we've gotta, we gotta get rid of all of our cultural distinctives and and and find some way where we can all act the same and I'll be the same and ignore our cultural distinctives.

This is never the idea of scripture.

It's not the cultural distinctives leave.

It's not that you quit being male or female and you quit having an ethnic background that you quit having a social status or economic status is it those things don't matter in the sense of where you stand in God's kingdom and therefore they shouldn't change the way you see somebody else.

It shouldn't change the way you treat somebody else based off of social status, economic status, ethnic background, or any of those things.

Not that we ignore those things.

They shouldn't change the way we see people.

Yeah.

Being adopted changes us into brothers and sisters.

Here's why.

Once you understand is we've got to approach God not like the Prodigal son.

See, the prodigal son wants to come to the father and just be a servant.

He wants to downgrade from a son to a servant and the we get.

There's some humility there and there's some brokenness and repentance and we understand that, but that's not.

See, God wants us to approach him.

His sons, he wants to love us as sons.

John Wesley was, uh, active in ministry.

Man.

He was in all kinds of things.

He says that one day he finally quit living under the law and trusted in Jesus Christ alone for his salvation and not his works.

And he says that he quit having the faith of a servant and started having the faith of a son.

That's when things changed for him.

He, he said, Christianity is a religion of sons, not slaves.

All right.

Now they're really big quote I have on your, on your bullets in there.

It'll be on the screen as well.

Is that of a book by J I packer called knowing God is chapter called Sons of God.

If it's gonna is this such a long quote?

And I apologize for that.

If it's going to whatever's gonna, make you receive it.

If you need to close your eyes, if you need to read along however, you're going to receive it best, and I want you to hear this.

Packer says this.

If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes it, the thought of being God's child and having God as his father.

If this is not the thought that prompts and controls is worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all

for everything that Christ taught, everything that makes lot of this, everything that makes the new testament new and better than the old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the fatherhood of God.

Father

is the Christian name for God.

Our understanding of Christianity cannot be better than our grasp of adoption.

J I packer and his book argues that there is no greater privilege and the Christian life than adoption.

Yes, justification is the primary benefit, right?

That we are declared innocent, that our debts are paid and everything, but just like Roman adoption.

That was a means to an end of relationship.

The reason he pays the debts, the reason he clears the criminal record, the reason there's therefore now no condemnation in Christ Jesus is so that we can have the spirit of Jesus in us cry out Abba father,

so we can see God as father.

No longer are we slaves.

No longer are we servants.

We are children of God.

Bring us to our last point.

Aba Father is the response of a redeemed people and because you are sons, because you've been adopted, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts crying, Abba, father, so you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir through God.

The beauty of our adoption by God is impossible to overstate.

I cannot adequately express to you how amazing this truth is and how freeing it is.

And this is, this is my so my prayer for you today that you experienced the freedom of being no longer a slave but a child.

It's your relationship with God is not boss.

Employee was father and child.

If you'd been adopted in the spirit of Christ in you will cry out in your heart of a father.

A Word Aba

is Aramaic

and it means like this intimate word like Daddy,

but it has a connotation of not just not just joyfulness of Daddy, although there is that there, but safety and comfort.

I told her Bible Study Group, the image that always comes to my mind when I think about the word[inaudible] was when I was in the ninth grade and I got news that one of my best friends had murdered one of my other best friends and I'm watching the news and I'm watching my best friend shackled in an orange jumpsuit.

Ankles and wrists and ninth grader surrounded by cops on the news being carried was supposed to be staying at my house that Friday night and I'm watching this and I'm and I'm weeping and mentally as a ninth grader how to process this moment.

That one, one of my best friends will be in prison until he's almost 70 years old and then to my other best friend, I'll never see again because they're dead.

I don't know how to process that emotion, but you know where I felt safest because I've got a good dad.

I was blessed.

Not Everybody has that, but I do.

My Dad had been on night shift, so he was asleep, no random, my dad's room and I buried my head in his chest and I just wept and he was confused because he had just woken up and he didn't know what was going on.

What did it matter?

I just needed to be held by my dad.

I needed the safety of being in my dad's arms.

No one that somehow it was going to be okay.

Listen to me.

Whatever's going on in your life, wherever things are falling apart, wherever things seem out of control, wherever you're trying to earn God's favor.

My.

My recommendation to you is to see God is Aba and father.

This is the cry of the heart of this is the response of the heart of a child of God.

I understand the cry of our heart is not an intellectual or philosophical claim.

It's not something you claim like God is my Aba.

Father is something you experienced.

It's intuitive in you.

I didn't just go, I'm going to be okay because I've got a dad.

It wasn't just that had a dad that made me okay.

It was laying my head on his chest and feeling his arms around me.

That made me feel okay.

It was living in there.

I want you to live in Aba.

Father.

Three things I want to see real quick.

Then I want to come to my conclusion.

Aba Fathers to cry.

The intuitive experiential cry of your heart as a spirit of Christ comes in you.

It's three things.

It's intuitive.

It's an intuitive part of your identity.

It's just knowing who you are.

It's it's.

It's knowing who you are as a child of God.

It's not just identity, it's intentional prayer.

It's knowing where to turn.

There's no one who you are and knowing where to turn, not to your good works, not to your ability to fix it, but just turning to him.

When everything seems out of control, it's lay in your head and Aba, father's chest and calling out to him like we said in psalms five, please hear the groanings of my heart.

God, I don't know what to do, but I know nothing surprises you a know, nothing stresses you out.

It's intentional prayer and lastly, it's immediate assurance of your redeemed relationship with the father and your heart.

When it, when it's an intuitive part of your relationship, it it'll bring assurance to you.

The best way I know how to illustrate that I got my wife's permission to share this when me and my wife have, which you may call heated fellowship

or

discussions where there are differences.

When conflict is there between me and my wife

there, there's a certain smile after 14 years of marriage and three years of dating before that, I've learned there's a certain smile.

My wife only gives me when everything's Okay and so after we've had a heated fellowship and I realized I'm the one at fault and I've apologized there.

There's some residual there for a little while and part of my personality is I can't be at peace until I know everything is okay and so I'm not okay until I look at her and she gives me that smile and when I get that particular smile, I know we've moved past it.

We're okay.

She's forgiven me.

When the spirit of Christ cross out Abba, father out of your heart,

it's like that.

It's like, no, I'm okay.

I'm going to be okay because he's forgiven me because he loves me and because I am no longer a slave but a child of God.

When you look at this text, what does it reveal for you?

Is it reveal that you see God is just your boss and your master?

Do you have just the faith of a servant?

Are you trying to measure up?

Are you trying to be good enough?

Maybe maybe to your earthly father.

You never measured up.

Maybe you were never good enough for him and so when your relationship with God, you just think, I just got to be good enough for him to love me.

I got to be good enough for him to accept me.

The bad news is you'll never be good enough, but the good news is you don't have to be.

He was.

He is and will forever be.

This is the beauty of adoption.

It's not about you being good enough.

It's about you being his so hear the cry of Aba.

Father, I'm gonna.

Transition us to the response time.

I asked Wesley to do a song that he did last week.

I'm no longer a slave, and here's why.

When we operate in legalism, we operate in fear, right?

Our relationship with God is not one of affection and safety and security and love.

We're operating in fear because we're wanting to measure up, right?

We, it's that moment where I've told the kids to fold the clothes and they say, can I watch TV while I fold the clothes?

Say as long as you're actually folding clothes, and then when I walk in, you see your kid to jump up real fast and start grabbing things right?

Because I've been sitting watching TV, but as soon as you enter the room, they freak out and they just start doing things right because their fear of getting in trouble, our relationship with God is like that.

Sometimes when we operate in legalism like, man, I hope he sees that I'm doing stuff I hope he sees, I'm trying hope he sees I'm doing.

I just know that I'm trying hard.

I don't want you to operate in fear.

God doesn't want you to operate in fear.

We fear him in the sense that we on respect and he is the father, but we operate in love.

We dwell.

We abide John Fifteen in his love

as our father,

so this song we're going to sing some of the words I felt like it would be good for us to sing this

no longer slaves to fear.

I am a child of God.

As we sing this, listen, I want you to think about those words and if you are a child of God, I want you to recognize you are no longer a slave

but a child of God out to Abba.

Father,

if you are a slave, if you live your life as a servant,

let me offer you today an opportunity to come talk to me about being adopted.

Maybe today it could be your March 17th, maybe the day you could be adopted by the father and you can cry out Abba, father, instead of just fear, you could live in the fact that you are loved by God.

Let's pray.