CHILDREN OF GOD
Matt 6:9 (678) May 12, 2013
INTRODUCTION:
One of the hazards of working with me is that I will try with all my heart to make you one of the family…by that I mean, when I work alongside you or oversee you on a regular basis I will seek to have a family type relationship…. I’ll view you as my son in the faith, or daughter, brother…or father, mother, sister…etc…You get what I’m saying…Most of the time its reciprocated…on some level.
LuAnn is my office manager and sister in Christ… (Older sister, but sister none-the less). (LOL) it’s like a year…Steve her husband is our facility engineer…I like that, he takes care of the building daily…He is one of my best friends…they have adopted a little girl named Peyton…She’s brought a joy to Steve & LuAnn’s life that is overflowing…
But let me caution you if you see Steve with Peyton or Luann with Peyton...don’t ask either of them if they have “children of their own”
Because I’m going to tell you…Peyton is theirs…yes she’s adopted, but Luann is her “real” mother and Steve is her “real” father…just as real as they are to Chris and Amanda…And you might say “yeah, yeah but you know what I mean?!!!
And I’ll respond, “Yeah and here’s what I mean…Peyton isn’t part Johnson, half Johnson...kind Johnson…she is fully Johnson.
She’s gonna grow up knowing what deer meat tastes like…(If Steve ever kills a deer) She’s gonna want to be a ballerina like her sister Amanda…Peyton will grow up listening to Chris Tomlin and Aerosmith because Peyton is Steve and LuAnn’s daughter. I’ve known Steve and LuAnn for almost a decade and a half…..I’ve been on more short time mission trips with Steve than I can recall…and LuAnn is involved in my ministry almost every day. I’ve seen them experience joy on many levels, but one of the most joyous occasions was this (Show Picture of signing day)
It’s the day Peyton became officially a Johnson…A judge declared it and signed it into being, but Peyton’s life is based on her relationship with her family every single day…as she plays princess tea party…the ballerina, the future deer hunter…
This picture of joy is an earthly adoption gives us just a small glimpse on this Mother’s Day into a far greater joy found in Heavenly adoption. Without a doubt our status before God was settled the moment we repented of our sin and surrendered completely to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ…But our lives are based on the love relationship we have every day with God our Father…He showers His children with affection…This relationship is visible, tangible, real, and powerful...you do not have this because you prayed a prayer…or got baptized to complete a duty…
The Christian life is about us following Jesus as God’s sons and daughters. When we follow Jesus in a relationship like this with the Father as sons and daughters we experience a desire for Him and pleasure in Him that totally transforms everything about us….When God the Father draws “Near to Us” that relationship changes everything!!!
You see many individuals still live as God’s servant when in reality He wants us as His son.
I A SON OR A SERVANT
Pray like Jesus taught His followers in the sermon on the Mt….”Our Father In Heaven”
Do you think Matthew 6:9 is a mistake? This is the first time in all of scripture anyone is encouraged to pray to God as Father.
In fact in the Old Testament God is only addressed as Father 15 times. He’s called numerous majestic titles, but Father only 15…However when we come to the gospels, the first 4 books of the New Testament God is described as “Father” 165 different times…all but 1 of them occur where Jesus is specifically teaching His disciples.
Followers of Jesus have the privilege of knowing, worshipping, talking to, and relating to God as “Our Father”.
J.T. Parker in the book “Knowing God” says that viewing God as our Father is central to understanding the Christian life…He writes…
What is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest
answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God as Father…If you want to
judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the
thought of being God’s child, and having God as His Father. If this is not the
thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on
life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.
Or He may not be a Christian at all!
[John Wesley, one of the most influential preachers and leaders of the 18th century…He grew up in a Christian home…lived what looked to be an exemplary Christian life. He graduated with honors from Oxford University…became an ordained Pastor in the Church of England and regularly ministered in the prisons and slums of London. He was an avid student of the Bible….He prayed regularly…fasted….attended multiple worship services on Sunday and throughout the week. He even went to the British Colony of Georgia as a missionary to the Native Americans who lived there…yet when Wesley returned to England he confessed in his journal that he wasn’t a Christian at all. He wrote “I who went to America to convert others was never myself converted to God.”…you might wonder….”How can you do all that and yet not be a Christian.” Here’s what Wesley wrote “I had even then the faith of a servant, though not of a Son”.
It’s not what you do that makes you a Son it’s whether you’ve ever entered into a relationship with the Father or not…What about you…are you living as a servant…or a child? Is your faith more like that of a servant than that of a Son? …does the thought of being God’s child prompt your worship, your prayers, your entire outlook on life?
It amazes me when I look at the people in the New Testament, primarily Hebrews that wanted to trade in a slavery to the Law for another type of slavery, based in works, or the act of circumcision under a banner of Christianity…and there are so many in the Church or under some banner of Christianity that do the exact same thing…not children….but servants…not saved by grace through faith, but working to be worthy. Our relationship with God through Christ sets us free.
II THE FATHER OF FREEDOM AND LOVE
Listen to these words…Gal 5: 1-6 (p812) on this Mother’s day listen to the words that introduce chapter 5…”Therefore brothers and sisters we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman…” (Gal 4:31)
Our new birth doesn’t make us servants of the law again, but children born from grace…under a shower of love…I’m in awe when I read…”How great is the Love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!”
Jesus communicates some of the same feelings when He says, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for His friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything I learned from my father I have made known to you.” (John 15: 13-15 - p752)
Freedom…not to indulge the flesh…but be in relationship with the Father through a friendship with the Son to be God’s children!!!...lavished with His love…
Lavish love doesn’t just go a little farther…it goes out of sight…it doesn’t give regretting the loss…it gives with explosive joy….
Jesus, John, Paul all seem to say God adores us, delights in providing for us, protecting us, hearing from us,…He doesn’t want anyone to be separated from Him…He wants all to be saved…
He will go to any lengths to demonstrate how much He loves us, even when we are sinners He’ll die for us (Romans 5:8) He’ll lay down his life for those He loves…His friends…this is the truth we come to know that sets us free…
[Take the love you feel for your children…take the love you feel for your grandbabies…inject that feeling with perfect justice, mercy and grace…and then you have the first speck of God’s infinite Love…and unlimited patience.
He does not desire slaves…He longs for adopted sons…adopted daughters who cry out in their spirit “Abba” Daddy.
Why would I want to introduce anyone to a slave owner? And because my connection to God is based on my worth and ability…I won’t –nor will I have any desire to do so…And when Jesus returns I’ll tell him about all the stuff I did to be worthy and he’ll say. “Who are you?..I don’t know you!”
But real relationships are different…
III ‘WILL YOU BE THE GRANDMOTHER OF MY GRANDCHILDREN”
[I’ve known Kari for almost 2 years when I started saving for a ring, I worked the entire summer (sold my High School class ring, gold was up even then) and a Nazarene Church took up a love offering for me after I shared my testimony with their youth group in Hillsboro, Ohio…I gave LeRoy’s jewelry store all of it and made payments of $19 a month until it was paid off…I arranged Dinner at a fancy restaurant…(Peter’s Peer 77). Stupidly gave the ring to a waiter (thankfully He didn’t steal it) and had him bring it out in a piece of Key Lime pie…Kari’s favorite…I got down on one knee and asked (“Will you be the grandmother of my grandchildren?)”. She said, “Yes” neither one of us were really thinking about being grandparents then…I just thought it sounded cool. Now she is…and I’m not sure the 21 years old “duffushead” that stood in front of a preacher saying “I will and I do” understood love at all. I wanted Kari, desired her…and we waited until we were married…but the Love of 21 year old is nothing compared to the love of a 53 year old Papaw…We’ve let God build our home…Jesus has always been the reason we live and love…always perfect…Nope (humans don’t do perfect very well.) But our relationship and desire…it’s fused with real love and faith…tested in the fires of life…Love….I understand it a little better since my proposal became a reality.]
It’s not an accident God uses this illustration…of marriage to describe His relationships with His people…in both the Old Testament and the New. Marriage is intimate (or at least it’s designed by Him to be) it’s filled with emotions, struggles, victories and disappointments…For better? Yeah sometimes…for worse...yeah sometimes…Till death do us part (1/2 the time).
And our children and grandchildren are a product of that union…do we, have we lavishly loved them? I guess you’d have to ask them.
[Our union with Jesus is a covenant relationship…the Old Testament covenant was under the law…The New covenant we have with God is under grace…Both marriage and Christianity are all about relationships.
Marriage and Christianity begin with a special kind of faith and love that says I’ve found the one I’ve been looking for” (or they found me) this love says, “I will put you first…the search is over and you’re so much in love you share this decision with others…with everyone!
And the Wedding Ceremony and Baptism are both expressions of this covenant of love…there is an end and a beginning…I leave my old life and begin a shared life…I give an oath of allegiance and my life after the covenant ceremony involves living out the oaths I’ve made…The two become one…In marriage with your mate…In Christianity…The Holy spirit…Christ in you.]
Amazingly, Christ is the one who always proposes to you….Come to me….
Let’s pray
(Special offering of Grace for the Clarks)
