"The Abba Experience: Embracing Our True Identity in Christ"

G'day, thanks for joining the Heights Church podcast today. We hope you enjoy our message.

If you're in the Sydney area, be sure to join us at the Heights Church at Goldstone

Road, Cornsville Heights, Sydney, Australia.

Okay, so we're going to read from Galatians chapter 3, verse 26 to 4, verse 7.

So we'll follow along on the screen or you can open up your Bibles.

So in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith.

For all of you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ

there is neither Jew nor Gentile neither slave nor free nor is there male and

female for you are all one in Christ Jesus if you belong to Christ then you

are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise,

What I am saying is that as long as an heir is underage, he is no different

from a slave, although he owns the whole estate.

The heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father.

So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world.

But when the set time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman,

born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.

Because you are his sons, God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts,

the Spirit who calls out, Abba, Father.

So you are no longer a slave, but God's child. And since you are his child,

God has made you also an heir.

As we get to our next message on Galatians, I've entitled this message, The Abba Experience.

Now, as transformative as it might be, I'm not talking about the old Swedish group, Abba.

Newport Primary School principal, when Cody and Tyler were there,

loved Abba. In fact, he massively loved and was known for it.

Every single morning, he would play Mamma Mia as the kids would walk into school.

Now, I'd hate to think the irreparable damage that happened to their growing

mind because every single morning they heard Mamma Mia. I'm not quite sure.

But today, I'm not talking about the Abba experience as in the Swedish group.

We're talking about the Abba experience as in knowing God, knowing a loving

God, knowing a father, our father God, belonging to him in his family,

adopted into his family, and And how, if we grasp that,

grasp that we're a child of God, how transformative that will be.

Let's be honest, religion has left many of us very weary.

Somewhere along the way, following Jesus got distorted into some moral performance.

We need to try harder, sin less, be good, be better, be good Christians, so to speak.

As if the gospel got replaced by some kind of scoreboard.

I don't know whether you've made yourself like that or people have that expectation

upon you. But Paul, writing to the Galatians, says that that kind of thinking

is absolute spiritual nonsense.

The Christian life isn't about measuring up. It's about waking up.

It's about waking up from our dead state to a living state with our Father.

Waking up to the wonder that is already yours. By faith, we become a child of

God. And that's not sentimental fluff.

That's the central truth of the gospel. And it redefines absolutely everything.

It redefines how we see God, how we see ourselves, how we see others,

and how we live in this world.

So as we go through this passage today, we'll find truths that will replace.

Maybe what we've traditionally thought.

Maybe it will release us to be who God created us to be.

And as was mentioned by Andy, you can find the QR code in front of you that

will point you to the message notes.

As long as we've gone through this series, it seems as though probably to many

people that I've beaten up the law a little bit.

Basically, like it's the enemy of all Christian things.

But not the actual law itself I'm talking about.

I'm more referring to rather our attitude towards the law. That's the Mosaic law.

If you look at Galatians in our passage that preceded the one that was read

for us, chapter 3, verses 21 to 25, you find that the law, all 613 of them,

and grace are really not enemies.

They're not opposites. Rather, they work together. one

exposes the need and the other one

meets the need the law is like

this diagnostic MRI it reveals the truth even when it hurts it shows us the

problem either hidden beneath the surface or obvious to all our sin but like

any diagnostic imagery it has no power to actually change anything.

It doesn't have any power to

change what is revealed. It only reveals the problem and shows the need.

Grace, on the other hand, is like a physician.

Grace doesn't show you your need. It fixes it.

And that's why Jesus is called the great physician. He spiritually heals us.

So the law reveals our brokenness, our great need for God, and grace reveals

God's goodness in accepting us as we are.

The law brings us to the end of ourself because there is no way we can get past

the point that we have sinned and we've broken the law and we cannot repair

it. Once we've broken it, that's the end.

But grace meets us there. And with open arms, the love of Jesus embraces us

in forgiveness as we walk forward.

David will address this next week. But the question you might have is that if

we're saved by grace and we're saved from sin, from my sin, past, present, and future—.

Then why can't I just live the way that I want? After all, I am forgiven.

It's kind of like my argument that I had with my heart surgeons and the clinics

that followed my heart surgery with the people at the Seine.

They taught us how to eat properly, how our diet should be right for a person who has heart disease.

And I said, well, I'm taking cholesterol pills, so what do I need to worry about at all?

The cholesterol is going to go down. I can eat as many chips and as much fried

stuff as I ever want, right?

But heart surgery is supposed to, with the new life that it brought,

awaken me to a new lifestyle.

I won't say whether it has or not, at times.

It's the same with grace though. God has given me new life through his grace,

but it's not cheap grace that just lets us live the way that we want to live.

It's a costly grace that awakens our gratitude.

And while I don't keep God's commands to earn his love, I obey because I've already got it.

Grace doesn't make us careless. It actually makes us grateful.

That's the great news about God's amazing grace, is that not only does it attack

us in the sense of providing what we cannot provide ourselves,

but it actually provides us and frees us to live the way that God would have us to live.

So we go from the law to grace.

And if we do that from a God perspective, it goes kind of like from a boss who's

bringing down rules and regulations to a father.

It's a shift in our relationship. That's what happens when we become a Christian.

We shift our relationship so that God doesn't appear to be the one that's checking

off the boxes, but rather the one that lovingly embraces us.

Galatians 3-25 talks about the law being our guardian or our custodian.

It kept the Jewish people on the straight and narrow.

If you've got your Bible in front of you, look at that. Before this faith came,

we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed.

So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ so that we might be justified by faith.

The New Living Translation has, I think, the proper meaning of the word prisoner.

We were kept in protective custody. Now, when we say we, it's not us.

It's Paul talking about the Jewish people. The Jewish people were kept in protective

custody, actually a custodian.

In a Greek family who were well off, they used to have a slave that was in charge

of the children from age six to 16. Wouldn't that be great?

The slave accompanied the child to school to see that no harm would come to them.

Their job was not to teach the child. Their job was to deliver them safely to the teacher.

And Paul says the law was protective custody.

It was never meant to be the end in itself, but was to deliver us to the place

where we can find true forgiveness, and that is Jesus.

And as we become as much in Jesus, we're fully in him.

And that means that we relate to God as Jesus does.

And Jesus does not relate to God as his boss.

He relates to him as his father.

One of the hardest things, I think, to avoid is transferring our human relationships

onto our relationship with God.

I see it over and over again when people have incredibly difficult times about

who their father was and who their father is and how that's really impacted

them over the time about how they would view God.

For example, projecting your relationship experience that you had with your

father onto God, your interaction with your boss onto God, and that's it.

No matter how loving our fathers are or were, no matter how honest and fair

our parents bosses are or were, no matter how harsh our fathers may be or may have been,

no matter how dishonest and unfair our bosses were, God is not a human.

He is our heavenly, perfect Father. He is right and just and fair and loving in all he does.

So one of the deepest tragedies, I think, in the Christian life is that many

Christians live as though God were their boss instead of their heavenly Father.

And Galatians were falling into that trap. They were relating to God as like

he was a taskmaster, like he had a clipboard and a time clock,

and he's always evaluating, never embracing.

But Paul is clear that that's not the gospel. That's not good news.

You're not an employee trying to keep your job. You're not an intern trying

to hope for a permanent position. You are a child of God.

You've been adopted. You're welcomed.

You're loved, not for what you do, but for who you are and who you are in Christ.

So in Galatians 26 to 29, where our reading started today, Paul outlines the

core identity of the Christian, your core identity if you're a Christian.

You are a child of God through faith. You are clothed with Christ.

He covers your floors.

You are united in Christ. There's no second tier to you. You belong to Christ.

And if you belong to him, then you are heirs of everything that he has promised as children.

And if you reverse that It's really cool.

You belong to Christ. You are one in Christ. You've been clothed with Christ,

and you're a child of God.

And that's not religion. That is a relationship.

Before Christ, we shaped or our identity was shaped around performance,

appearance, success, or even failure, and we were shaped,

We learn to ask the world, who do you say that I am? And we often live by the answer that it gave.

But in Christ, your identity is no longer up for debate.

You are not your past. You are not your performance.

You are not even your spiritual achievements.

You are a son and daughter of the

living God. And Paul uses the imagery of clothing that you put on Christ.

And that means that, as we all know, that clothing kind of gives an outside identity.

However you dress kind of makes you either feel right or look the way that you

want or connect with others the way that you want.

But now the clothing that you've been put on as Christians identifies you with Christ.

Clothing covers everything from our shame of our sin to all the things that

we have done wrong as it covers our clothing here.

Clothing is close to us it fits us well,

as Christ is closer than your skin he is in you and you in him and here's the

freedom you don't put on Christ to impress others,

You don't put on Christ to do the things that you think will identify you.

You are already loved as you put him on, as you become a Christian.

Now, what does that look like? Well, I think we can see that in verse 28.

Life is full of invisible hierarchies,

and I'm pretty sure that you may have all experienced them over time,

whether it's job titles or income

brackets or who you know or where

you live or how you dress or what school you

go to or what school your kids go to they're

constantly measuring you or you're being measured by them and the hierarchy

that you that you can achieve through those things that the world puts out there

is either right up there or you're not so right up there or you're constantly

trying to climb a ladder that's invisible or visible, whatever it might be.

But imagine walking into one of those exclusive places that you may have thought

that you want to get to, or a boardroom that you eventually got to,

or that high-end club that you've now been accepted to and you have a membership to,

or that tight-knit social circle that you've always tried to get into,

but maybe somehow has eluded you.

And someone hands you a badge that says, you have full access. There is no conditions.

You have all the privileges. You absolutely belong.

I don't know whether you've had that experience before where you have felt that

you belong, that you just are there and you're there just as you are and you belong.

I know times in my life where I haven't had that experience where I felt as though I didn't belong.

I lived in winter everything slowed down as far as like competitions and stuff

like that went and I used to go to a church down the road from where I was staying

at in Teen Ranch and for one Christmas present was an amazing thing you used

to get all these cool stuff,

this guy Mel Stevens the director of Teen Ranch gave me a sports jacket and

it was the ugliest thing I've ever seen in my life it's one of those tweed things

you know that if you've got one,

It fits you, identifies you.

But what happened is I was a bit perplexed. Why did you give me that?

Well, I didn't want you to feel out of place when you went to church.

I went, I don't feel out of place when I go to church. And he thought I did.

And from that point on, as I didn't get dressed up, I just went as a cowboy

because that's what I was, I never felt as though I belonged.

I felt as though everybody was looking at me wanting to wear the coat.

How stupid, eh? But this is what happens sometimes.

Change the coat for where your kids go to school or how much money you have

or what suburb you live in or what type of house you have or do you own your

house or what type of car you have and do you own a Jeep?

Whatever it is, I know that that sense of belonging is so inground in us that

we want to belong to family that Sometimes kids will do incredible things to

get the love and care of their parents.

They go far beyond what is reasonable.

And I know that husbands and wives will do incredible things to gain and earn the love of each other.

So much so that people endure all kinds of hardships and things that are wrong

to gain the love and to have a sense of belonging.

How awesome it is to stand before the living God knowing he accepts us just as we are.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

He welcomes us and adopts us into his family saying that you are already in.

There is no validation that is required. You don't have to hustle for divine acceptance.

You're already there. You're already loved.

The barriers that existed, that you thought in your mind existed,

that caused separations are gone.

The Bible calls the distinct barrier in the Bible between Jew and Greek is the

dividing wall of hostility has been knocked down. and it is flattened.

And Paul writes, there is neither Jew nor Greek nor slave nor free nor male

nor female. You are all one in Christ.

Now, don't misunderstand these verses that we read. It's not about erasing the differences.

It's not about flatlining everything. It's about erasing superiority.

See, in Paul's world, like ours, was built in a category of status and power

and worth and religion and race and gender and class,

all tools for sorting out people for those who are the greater thans and those

who are the less than, Colin. But Paul tears up that.

He tears up the scoreboard and he says, your ethnicity doesn't affect your access to God.

Your social status does not limit the value that you have in church.

Your gender does not define your spiritual inheritance.

There are no longer good Christians and lesser Christians, but only all who are one in Christ.

You are fully included and accepted and fully loved.

It's amazing news, isn't it? That's what you're going to take into your week

this week, that you're fully accepted and you're fully loved.

The church is not a pyramid. It should be a circle where Christ is the circle

and we all fit within Christ, within that circle.

So that's the first thing that is what it looks like. It looks like we're all

one in Christ. But it also looks like we're adopted.

We're not just forgiven. we're not people who are forgiven, we are adopted as sons.

And Paul shifts the metaphors from clothing to adoptions.

He says, God sent his son to redeem those under the law that we might receive adoption as sonship.

See, redemption or being redeemed from your sin rescues you from slavery, the slavery of sin.

Adoptions welcomes you into some sonship. Forgiveness says you're free to go.

But adoption says you're free to stay.

And that's what the gospel is. You're free to stay with God because he has made

you a son or a daughter in Christ, a child of God.

No doubt you have seen that over time. I think probably the greatest thing over

the last few years is just to

hang out with Watoto kids and to know what adoption really meant for them.

That they had nothing. And for many of them, they were just left on the side

of the road when they were picked up.

And yet they were brought into a loving family and they had a house,

mom, and they were brought into a

family where, although the system was incredibly broken, they had a home.

They had some place that they knew that they were loved. And that's just an

illustration of the gospel.

You're not just off the hook. You're home. You're not just tolerated. You're treasured.

Adoption isn't based on potential. It's based on God's mercy.

And in God's mercy, he's adopted you into his family.

How do we know that that's true? and how do we experience that this has happened?

This is what it says in Galatians 4, verses 6 to 7, that the Spirit has made it real.

Galatians 4:6–7

Paul gives us one of the profound images of all time. He says this,

because you are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts.

The Spirit cries out, Abba, Father.

The Holy Spirit is given to us for many reasons and we can read a whole book

of that. that Philip Jensen wrote. It's an incredible book.

It's about that thick and really

a lot of words. I've got it there if you want to read all the words.

But one thing that the Spirit has given to us is in our hearts so that we might

recognize that we are the children of God.

Abba is not a theological concept. It's a toddler's cry. It's a young baby's cry. It's like data.

It's trust. It's belonging. It's deep.

It's unfiltered expression of intimacy. It's not just a word like is out there

for a replacement word for God that a child might use.

It is the most intimate word that you possibly can have.

Every parent knows the cry of their child, don't they?

From six months to four years to 16 years to 40 years old, your parents knew your cry.

You can have children that are just screaming away at some party from one end

of the place to the other, but you know your child's cry.

You can hear it from a mile off, and you know it. It's like it's part of you.

Part of who you are is crying out to you, and you actually feel through their

cry what they're feeling. You understand that.

Well, the Spirit of Christ who indwells in all of us cries out,

and God totally understands.

And Paul says this, that what the Spirit does.

He doesn't just teach us about God, he brings us into God's love and he cries

out on our behalf, expressing the great need that we have.

Our cry out isn't our great and sovereign ruler, although that's what he is

and that's what we do cry, but our cry well and truly might mean that, Dad, I need you.

It's absolute existential intimacy the

spirit's work is both objective as in you're adopted and

subjective you feel it to the core

you don't just know God the father you experience him as father and as the Holy

Spirit does his work he gives you the spiritual security and assurance of his

presence you don't just pray or cry out of guilt but you cry out out of belonging,

like the prodigal son father I have sinned and I'll do anything to get back in your presence.

It's the reality of the gospel, not just believing new truths,

but breathing new life into us. So here's the conclusion.

What does God want from you? To follow the whole 613 rules?

I think it's just to live loved, to live knowing that you are loved by God,

that he hears your cry, that he hears your heart,

and that he's changing you every day to live with him.

What does God feel about you? He feels the same way as he feels about his son,

because you are in Christ.

You are in that relationship with him.

And where the world says, be a good Christian, the gospel says you are a beloved

child of God. Let's pray.

In some ways, Lord, we have been conditioned to the scoreboard, the checklist.

In some ways, we have been conditioned to think that you are the judge of all

judges, which you are, but who are looking upon us with great dissatisfaction.

And somehow or other, we have to clean up our life so that you'll be pleased with us.

But Lord, as Christians, we have to recognize that you look upon us, you look upon your son.

In fact, you call us children of God and you have adopted us into your family.

So Lord, I pray that we live like that.

I pray that every time that Satan comes in and goes, how could you possibly be loved?

That even though there might be times in our life where we run away and we squander

the wealth of what you've given us with wild living or whatever it might be,

we know that when we come home, Lord, you run out to meet us.

And with great celebration of one that was lost, you celebrate.

That you've come home, that my son has come home.

And I pray, Lord, we might realise that in our life.

And we might live as people who are loved by you.