Introduction:
The story is told of a young man who was in a movie theater. As the lights dimmed, and he was loaded down with popcorn, cokes and candy, he began to pace up and down the aisle, scanning all the darkened rows. It was obvious he was looking for the people with whom he had come. After three or four unsuccessful trips up and down the aisle, he finally stopped and asked loudly, "Does anybody here recognize me?"
We all want to belong don’t we? We all want be known by others and to know that someone out there knows who we are and cares about us. We have a need to belong, to be in community together. That’s why we join clubs, fraternities, sororities, civic organizations, sports teams, PTA, and even churches. We have a need to be in community with others just like us or close to being like us. That’s part of how we’re wired.
It’s the way God created us. We’re meant to be in community with one another. God created Adam and Eve together so they wouldn’t be alone; so they would have support, nurture and care. Even Jesus needed that support. The first thing he did when he began his ministry was to gather a small circle of friends -- a group who would eventually become the leaders of the beginning of the church. Yes, he needed to train them, but Jesus also needed their support and their friendship. At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed by Judas with a kiss, he told them all, "I no longer call you servants, . . . now I call you friends." (John 15:15)
The disciples needed that assurance and that sense of belonging, too. And more than anything, they needed the sense of belonging to a family. Earlier that same night, Jesus said, "I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you." (John 14:18).
The famous poet, Robert Frost, once said, "Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in." Home is the place to rest, to laugh, to eat, to sleep. It’s the place of our family, the social group where we love and are loved. The setting in which we grow and develop. The safe haven where burdens and joys can be shared. In our families we know we belong. In our families we can be secure.
Families are so very important. And that’s obviously why God chose that image to describe our relationship with him. We are not just servants, we’re not just friends. We’re children of God.
"All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ’Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ." (Romans 8:14-17)
Paul says, "you have received a spirit of adoption . . .we are children of God."
I. We Are Children of God
This is perhaps one of the most powerful passages that was ever written. It tells us that in the Kingdom of God, there are no orphans and no step-children. Through Christ Jesus, our Savior, we are the children of God.
And that’s an amazing truth! You can feel the incredible way John felt as he wrote, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” (I John 3:1a). How utterly amazing that the God of the universe would make us his children.
Now there are two ways to enter a family. The most common way is to be born into a family. Early yesterday morning, Savannah was born into the family of Stacy and Patricia Searels. They proudly named her, they will bring her home from hospital soon, and show her off with great joy to their family and friends. They call Savannah "theirs" - she belongs to them. She is protected by them, cared for by them, loved by them. All the resources of the parents are used for the benefit of little Savannah -- for her growth and love and security.
But there’s a second way to enter a family, and that’s through adoption. Adoption is the action by which a husband and wife decide to take a boy or girl who is not their physical offspring into their family, as their own child.
Adoption is a special way to enter a home because the parents take great effort to have that child. They choose to have a child and take deliberate, often very painful, costly and time-consuming steps to get a child. There’s a great deal of waiting, countless interviews, leads that turn into dead ends, until finally a child is found. Even then, when they are told a child is available, they have the right to say, "Yes, I want that child" or "No, I will pass and wait for another - this child won’t do for me." It takes only nine months to have a birth child, but generally years to have an adopted child. Adoption never just happens. It is always a free, loving, intentional act filled with grace and compassion.
And once a child is adopted, that child ends up with the same rights and privileges as any birth child. Nobody can say that she or he is any less a member of the family, any less a full child of the parents than those who enter the home by being born into it.
The first adoption recorded in scripture was that of Moses. When Pharaoh ordered all the male Hebrew children killed, Moses’ mother placed him in a waterproof basket and set him in the Nile River among some reeds. When Pharaoh’s daughter came to the river to bathe, she saw the basket and had one of her maids retrieve it. She took him home to the palace and he was adopted as her own.
When Esther’s parents died, she was adopted by an older cousin named Mordecai who loved her as a father and took special care to look after her welfare.
But perhaps the most touching adoption mentioned in the Old Testament was that of Mephibosheth, the crippled son of Jonathan. When David learned about Mephibosheth, he gave him all the land that had belonged to his grandfather Saul and had him dine regularly at the king’s table in the palace in Jerusalem.
Pharaoh’s daughter adopted Moses out of pity. And although Mordecai loved Esther, his adoption of her was prompted by family duty. But David’s adoption of Mephibosheth was motivated purely by his gracious love. In many ways, David’s adoption of Mephibosheth pictures God’s adoption of us.
David took the initiative in seeking out Mephibosheth and bringing him to the palace. Being crippled in both feet, Mephibosheth was helpless to render David any significant service. But David brought this outcast into his home and graciously granted him a magnificent inheritance to which he was no longer legally entitled.
God says to us, “I will receive you. I will be a Father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters.” (2 Cor. 6:17-18).
For some people today, the concept of adoption carries the idea of second-class status in the family. In the Roman culture of Paul’s day, however, an adopted child, especially an adopted son, sometimes had greater prestige and privilege than the natural children.
Some of you may be saying at this point, "Wait a minute, you’re confusing me. What do you mean when you say we are adopted into the family of God? I have always thought that we were born into the family of God. Jesus talked in John 3 about being “born again”.
And that’s true. We are born again, born into God’s family. But we’re also regarded as adopted. Both of those statements are true and are intended to emphasize two different aspects of our relationship with God.
Being born into the family of God shows the significance of baptism, how we come up out of the waters a brand new person, a babe in Christ who has to grow and mature and develop in the faith.
But adoption emphasizes the fact that God looked at us and loved us and picked us out and said, “I want that one to be a part of my family.”
So both of these statements are true.
A minister in Vermont tells how a Bible Class teacher was registering the children in Sunday School and she asked two brothers their ages and birthday. One of the two boys said, "We’re both seven. My birthday is April 8, 1976, and my brother’s is April 20, 1976." The teacher was a little confused and said, "But that’s impossible!" The other brother said, "No, it’s not, one of us is adopted." Before she was even aware that she had asked, the words came out, "Which one?" The boys looked at each other and smiled. Then one of them said, "We asked Dad that awhile ago, but he just said he loved us, and he couldn’t remember any more which one was adopted.”
There is nothing more wonderful to remind yourself of, day by day, than this great fact: If you are a Christian, you are a child of the living God, adopted and born into his family.
Listen to what Paul says in Ephesians 1:3-5. I want to read this out of the new Century Version: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In Christ, God has given us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly world. That is, in Christ, he chose us before the world was made so that we would be his holy people -- people without blame before him. Because of his love, God had already decided to make us his own children through Jesus Christ. That was what he wanted and what pleased him.”
Did you catch that? Because we are his children, God has given us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly world. Because you are his child,
God loves you,
God protects you,
God provides for you,
God plans for you,
God hears you,
God claims you as his own,
God chastens and corrects you, and
God honors you.
All because you are his child. And there’s one more thing.
II. We Are Heirs With Christ
Paul says we are children. And if children, then heirs. We are made joint heirs with Christ. Paul said, “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:29).
In Jewish tradition, you may recall that the oldest son normally received a double portion of his father’s inheritance. In Roman society, though, a father had the prerogative of giving more to one child than to the others, but normally all the children received equal shares. They shared equally in the inheritance.
I heard about an elderly gentleman who had had serious hearing problems for a number of
years. He went to the doctor and the doctor was able to have him fitted for a
set of hearing aids that allowed the gentleman to hear for the first time in years. The elderly
gentleman went back in a month to the doctor and the doctor said, "your hearing is perfect. Your family must be really pleased you can hear again."
To which the gentleman said, “Oh, I haven’t told my family yet. I just sit around and listen to the conversations. I’ve changed my will three times!”
Everyone ought to have a will. The reason is that none of us knows when we’re going to die and so we ought to be prepared. But wills are for the living, not for the dead. That’s probably why we procrastinate in making our wills. We like to think of other people’s wills, because we might be in them. We don’t like to think of our own wills, because of what they remind us that we will one day have to do.
I don’t know how many wills you have ever been in, if any. If you were to get word that a distant uncle died, who happened to be worth several million dollars, and that you were in the will, would you be interested in reading the will? The answer is obvious. You would want to know what you had been left.
As you read the Word of God, you come to understand that you have been named in God’s will. There is a lot involved in this idea of being a child of God. It’s more than simply having your sins forgiven. It is coming into an inheritance. We become heirs, the Scripture says, fellow heirs with Christ. In other words, you’re in the will now that you are in the family.
The story is told of a lawyer who hired a detective agency to locate a missing heir, who had just inherited 120 million dollars. The head of the agency told the lawyer, "I’ve put our best detective on the case. She’s young, she’s smart and she’s ambitious. She’ll find your missing heir if anyone can."
A few weeks later, the lawyer received a call from the female detective. She said, "I’ve got good news, I’ve found your missing heir."
The lawyer said, "That’s great, where is he?"
She said, "Oh, he’s right here, with me at the hotel. We’ll see you just as soon as we get back from our honeymoon."
By worldly standards, that detective was smart and ambitious. She wanted to be a part of that inheritance. And when you realize the magnitude of the offer being made by God through Christ, it’s hard to pass up the opportunity to be a part of God’s inheritance.
I want you to see that as fully adopted and accepted children of God, we share the same inheritance as the only begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ.
You are not only an heir of God, but you are a joint heir with Christ. Most of you married couples probably have joint checking accounts. In a joint checking account, two people or more share one account. Now, if you are in a joint account, how much can you write a check for on that account? Half of what’s in there? No, to have a joint checking account means that you can draw out of that account 100% of whatever is there. Now we are joint heirs with Christ. We share in His kingdom, not just a part, we share it all with Him. We have access to all the promises of God, to all the blessings of God, to all the inheritance of God with Christ Jesus. We are joint heirs. It is all ours. Everything we need for life and godliness is ours.
Do you know how much power that has in it? Do you realize how wonderful that is? Our relationship is not one of uncertainty but of belonging. We are the children of God. To be told that we are loved is one thing. But to be adopted and made joint heirs with the Son of God. Heirs in full. Not just on paper. Not just for appearance’ sake. Not just as a token. But heirs with a full share in the inheritance. Heirs with all the rights and privileges and promises.
And that inheritance is ours for the taking. It’s offered to us but not forced. All we have to do is choose whether or not to claim it. God calls us; he begs us with his gracious love to claim our inheritance as children of God. But the sad truth is we don’t have to. We can reject it.
I heard read about a man whose father died leaving him an estate of $400,000. But he refused to accept the inheritance. The trustees of the estate took him to court. The judge ruled that the young man had a legal right to refuse the inheritance. The court order cut him off from all future interest in the estate. The same is true today. We can refuse God’s offer. We can refuse our inheritance. The choice is ours.
We can refuse it or we can claim it. Fred Craddock, is a preacher who recently retired from teaching at Candler School of Theology. He told once of going back one summer to Gatlinburg, Tennessee to take a short vacation with his wife. One night they found a quiet little restaurant where they looked forward to a private meal.
While they were waiting for their meal they noticed a distinguished looking, white-haired man moving from table to table, visiting the guests. Craddock whispered to his wife, "I hope he doesn’t come over here." He didn’t want the man to intrude on their privacy.
But the man did come by their table. He said, "Where you folks from?" They said, "Oklahoma." "Splendid state, I hear, although I’ve never been there. What do you do for a living?"
"I teach homiletics at the graduate seminary of Phillips University." "Oh, so you teach preachers, do you? Well, I’ve got a story I want to tell you." And with that he pulled up a chair and sat down at the table with Craddock and his wife.
Dr. Craddock said he groaned inwardly. Oh no, here comes another preacher story. It seems everyone has one.
The man stuck out his hand. "I’m Ben Hooper. I was born not far from here across the mountains. My mother wasn’t married when I was born so I had a hard time. When I started to school, my classmates had a name for me, and it wasn’t a very nice name. I used to go off by myself at recess and during lunch time because the taunts of my classmates cut so deeply.
"What was worse was going downtown on Saturday afternoon and feeling every eye burning a hole through me. They were all wondering just who my real father was.
"When I was about 12 years old a new preacher came to our church. I would always go in late and slip out early. But one day the preacher said the benediction so fast I got caught and had to walk out with the crowd. I could feel every eye in church on me. Just about the time I got to the door I felt a big hand on my shoulder. I looked up and the preacher was looking at me. "’Who are you, son? Whose boy are you?’"
"I felt the old weight come on me. It was like a big, black cloud. Even the preacher was putting me down. "But as he looked down at me, studying my face, he began to smile a big smile of recognition. “’Wait a minute,’ he said, `I know who you are. I see the family resemblance. You’re a son of God.’
"With that he slapped me across the rump and said, `Boy, you’ve got a great inheritance. Go and claim it.’"
The old man looked across the table at Fred Craddock and said, "That was the most important single sentence ever said to me." With that he smiled, shook the hands of Craddock and his wife, and moved on to another table to greet old friends.
Suddenly, Fred Craddock remembered. On two occasions the people of Tennessee had elected an illegitimate boy to be their governor. His name was Ben Hooper.
The choice is ours: we can reject the inheritance and walk away. Or we can accept it and claim it as our own and let it be the most important words we’ve ever heard.
Those of us who are children of God are heirs to the greatest promise and we have the greatest news to share with a world lost and outcast, alone and lonely. We have found the place of belonging; we’ve found that intimate relationship with the one who accepts us no matter what our name, who we are, where we are or what we have done. We’re called to be a child of God and claim our inheritance.
Listen to this beautiful promise found in the book of Revelation. While on the isle of Patmos, John heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away…..He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son.” (Revelation 21:3-4,7).
