The Gospel & Adoption as Sons

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The Gospel & Adoption as Sons

January 2, 2022

Continuing on our Gospel Foundations series Bryce and I delve into the idea of God adopting us as his sons. The sons receive the inheritance and if we want to inherit God's blessings then we ought to hope that he would choose us and adopt us as his sons. What a wonderful foundational gospel truth we can always remember when alone, without family, and in despair. We have a father that loves us if you are in Christ. If not, his patience will not last forever. Thanks for tuning in and listening!

Key Texts:

Galatians 4:3-7; Ephesians 1:1-6

My guest joining me this week on the Sunday series is my brother Bryce. Bryce is getting his undergraduate degree in philosophy and hopes to get his MDiv. from a seminary after he completes his undergrad. He hopes to be a pastor shepherding Gods people one day.

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Transcript

For you to be adopted as a son necessitates that you were alienated and you were a child of Satan. And that it's not unloving for God to have those distinctions, right? It's again, there's a unique love I have for my wife. I have for no other woman.

That doesn't mean that I'm hating all other women and I'm just an unloving person. Don't think I will even ask you to make Jesus Lord of your life. That's the most preposterous thing I could ever tell you to do.

Jesus Christ is Lord of your life. Whether you serve him or not, whether you bless him, curse him, hate him, or love him, he is the Lord of your life because God has given him a name that is above every name so that the name of Jesus Christ every knee shall bow and tongue confess that he is Lord. Some of you will bow out of the grace that has been given to you and others will bow because your kneecaps will be broken by the one who rules the nations with a rod of iron.

But I'll not apologize for this God of the Bible.

[Music] Matthew chapter 26 verses 62 to 64. And the high priest stood up and said, "Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?" But Jesus remained silent.

And the high priest said to him, "I adjure you by the living God. Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God." Jesus said to him, "You have said so. But I tell you from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven." Welcome everybody to the For the King podcast.

Wherever you're listening in, wherever you're at in your walk of life, we appreciate you tuning in and listening to this podcast we have here. So it's me, the host of the podcast Rocky and my brother Bryce. You want to say hi? What's up? There he is.

And we wanted to start off this text today as a quick reminder that Jesus is king, right? Isn't that what we do every week on the podcast? Just a quick reminder, Christ is the king. And Bryce, you had something that you wanted to point out in this text, right? It's not that we will see Christ coming on the clouds and power. It's that he is coming in the clouds of heaven.

He's already doing it. This isn't a later date. This is something he is doing now in the clouds of judgment.

Exactly. And where does that come from? When he quotes that, when he says, "You'll see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds." Where's that from? Well, there's two passages. Daniel 7 and Isaiah 19 is an allusion.

But Daniel 7 in particular, where it says that the Son of Man came up to the ancient of days. And received what? An eternal kingdom. Yeah.

So this is definitely not a later day. This is... Exactly. This has happened.

He sat down at the right hand of power. Interesting. Interesting.

Wow. It's coming on the clouds of judgment. It seems like the text is pretty clear.

Yeah. It's almost like if I were like a pre-miller, I don't know, I would abandon my view. Yeah.

And maybe adopt like maybe some optimistic post-millennial eschatology. Okay. It would only be reasonable.

It would only be reasonable based on the text. So again, also another reminder of that text is Jesus was so pure he had to indict himself. I love that.

He remained silent. All these men were coming to testify and they're like, you have nothing to say, right? All their testimonies were contradictory. And Jesus finally says, I am the Son of Man and has to, what they perceive as blasphemy, that he has to indict himself.

But he tells the truth, obviously. Yeah. So that is who our great king is.

Love to start with a text like that. Just was a quick reminder of a few things. But this week we are continuing on our Gospel Foundation series that we release each Sunday.

Bryce and I have been in this series for a while because we think the Gospel is of utmost importance and we must get the Gospel right for there to be any power in the message. You can't go out and preach a message about a person that you don't know. You don't know his character.

You don't know what he's done in the past and you don't know what he is doing. There's no good news in that if you're, if you're clueless. So the Gospel was full and rich of theology, rich with theology, and you ought to speak accurately about Jesus, the Son of God.

And what he's done and what he's doing. So another facet of the good news that we're going to talk about today is the adoption we've received into his kingdom as heirs, having an inheritance from God himself. Which, I mean, if I was to get an inheritance from somebody, I would want it to be from the King of the universe.

So what a privilege it is as we walk through this, that humans, weak, frail, frankly, sheepishly stupid individuals, God would give an inheritance. So this is really good news, what we're, what we're hearing today and what we've been hearing in the Gospel foundations. Right.

Anything they add or? Yeah. And one thing that this doctrine assumes, if you are adopted, that means that you become what you were not. So if you were adopted as a son of God, then that necessarily means that not everybody is a son of God.

Yeah. Not everybody is a child of God. This is a popular viewpoint that runs rampant in America.

But we're here to tell you that if you're adopted into Christ's kingdom as sons, then that assumes that you were by nature, children of wrath, which is what Paul says in Ephesians two. Yeah. We're by nature, sons of Satan.

He is our father. I'm just like Jesus says in John 8 44 to the Pharisees, you are of your father, Satan, who's been lying from the beginning. So we're by nature, children of Satan because we follow after him.

But that's so unloving to say that to people. Yeah, I know. It's, you know, it's really a big problem because we're supposed to love our neighbor.

So, yeah. So it looks like the bad, and you know what's, yeah. And you know, what's insane about that when people like, how is there any, again, this, this is what we're getting at with the gospel foundations.

You totally rip all power out of the gospel when you tell somebody they're a son of God. Yeah. If they're, again, if you tell somebody that Jesus loves you, you're a son of God, you're made in the image of God, like you never made the image of God, obviously.

But then when you stretch that so far to say, then you don't need redemption because you're made in the image of God. Wow. What a marring of the gospel.

And like, if I were to hear that and I were a pagan, somebody that did not believe in the good news, did not believe in Christ, I would say, cool, that's awesome. I'm a son of God. It looks like I don't even have to do all the Christian stuff you guys do.

I don't need to read God's word. I don't need to worship God. I don't need to care about God at all.

I'm already a son of God. I don't need to believe in the son. I don't need to believe in the son.

I'm good. Yeah. So when people say that, well, it's, yeah, you cannot tell somebody they're a son of God without them thinking that obviously, and then feeling they're fine.

Right. There's going to be, there's, there's going to be implications in their mind if you tell them such things. And honestly, you would be doing somebody in utter disservice and be displaying to them pure hatred if you told them that they were a son of God by nature and that they were going to inherit things of heaven.

Yeah. Because think about that. This here, here, here lies a person who's been born a son of Satan and they're, they're headed straight for hell.

Yeah. And you're telling them, Oh God loves you. You know, you don't need to really worry about believing Jesus.

Don't repent. Make your own path. Yeah.

You make your own way to God. I'm just like Joel Osteen said on the Oprah Winfrey show. Yeah.

You know, there's only one way to Christ and there's only one way to God, the father through the son. And that's through repentance and faith. Like we've already been talking about.

And this is the most loving message ever that you can be adopted into this family. Exactly. What love from God that you did not have to do this, but he adopted us anyways.

Yep. And again, we have to remember, love is not just love. Love entails exclusivity in it.

So again, like Bryce started off saying for you to be adopted as a son necessitates that you were alienated and you were a child of Satan and that it's not unloving for God to obviously have those distinctions, right? It's again, I had, there's a unique level I have for my wife. I have for no other woman. That doesn't mean that I'm hating all other women and I'm just an unloving person.

It means I'm a loving person. I love my wife and I love no other woman. Right.

That, that exclusivity in love makes total sense. And so many people are like Christians don't show true love because they don't love people that are outside. You are to love your neighbor through obvious material ways that you can care for them.

And within it's also loving to tell them they're a rotten sinner headed for hell. That's a very loving to do that to your neighbor. And I'm sure the good Samaritan would have said that to his neighbor.

If he knew Christ, he would have said, Hey, I'm going to help you with your, obviously you're broken down on the side of the road and you need help, but I'm sure Christ is not meaning in that parable that he would not have told this man about his sin, that that would have been unloving. That's not what the good Samaritan parables talking about. Just unmerited love and telling people that they're sons of God, that God loves them.

Nothing's wrong. Not at all what the parable is getting at. You got to read context when you go into a parable.

Exactly. You can't extrapolate a parable on every sense of the letter. Yeah, exactly.

Okay. So we can get into the text now because that's enough banter, but I thought hopefully that was helpful. There's big issues there when you have a view of love and it's telling, especially in telling somebody they're a son of God.

So in Galatians chapter four, we're going to start in verse three, actually, I know Bryce wanted me to start in verse four. I'm going to start in verse three actually, because it talks about the alienation we had and now being sons. This is what we were, which what Bryce was highlighting that we were not sons of God.

And now we are. So starting in verse three in Galatians chapter four, in 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.

And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into your hearts, crying, Abba, father. So you are no longer a slave, but a son, if a son, then an heir through God. I wanted to read that verse three because we once were enslaved, not to God, to elementary principles of the world peddled by Satan and his demons, people, bad ideas, all forces of evil.

This is what we were enslaved to. We were wrapped up in a system, obviously, of being enslaved to sinfulness. We were in that.

And it says when the fullness of time come, God sent forth his son, born under the law. So this gets into some of our previous episodes, how Christ was the fulfillment of the law. He was born under the law.

And why did he have to be born under the law? It says that we might be redeemed and we might be received adoption as sons. So again, this is part of the gospel. It's littered all throughout scripture that there's a necessary link between Christ being the fulfillment of the law, that we might be sons because you cannot be a son, be in God's family without being righteous.

It would be the same as you can't be, again, this comes back to the exclusivity of love, of membership. You can't be on my team if you're not with me. You can't be in the army if you're a defector from the get-go.

I'm not going to let a man in my platoon that's fighting for the other team. There is exclusivity there built into the nature of reality here. So this is the good news that Christ was born under the law and was a fulfillment of the law, right? That when we believe and repent, what happens to us is we're now adopted into God's family.

Right. Yeah. And notice the debt that had to have been paid in order for our adoption to happen.

I mean, even now when people try to adopt a child, it costs money. Yeah. And Jesus paid the cost.

He was born of the woman, born under the law to redeem us who were under the law. Right. So there is a cost that happens here.

And this is why this is so central to the gospel. You can't just think about a sort of whimsical adoption that just happens by happenstance. Yeah.

Right. This is a gospel that has been wrought and paid by the blood of Jesus Christ because Jesus came and died for our sins to redeem us, to reconcile us, all these different things, which we'll end up getting into more and more. Now we have grounding for our adoption.

Yeah. So we cannot just have adoption isolated. Adoption is because of the glorious redemption of Christ as he hung on the cross for our sins, was buried and rose again from the grave.

Yep. So we have to ever be deeds for us. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's the grounding too, for why we are presently still sons.

We can't lose this inheritance because Christ said it is finished. You've been adopted into God's family. He's adopted you as a son.

He's given you a signet ring on your finger to symbolize that you are his, you are his son. And notice here too, this says son. It doesn't say son and daughters.

So son, your sons of God. And this is because the son is the one who receives the inheritance. Yeah.

Right. The women do not receive an inheritance because they receive the inheritance of their husband. Right.

So in these times, and I mean, I would conjecture even today, possibly at times as well. The son is the one who receives the inheritance. So this is why this is a theological adoption right here, that it's sons of God.

That's what we are now. We've been adopted as sons. So all the women in the crowd, if anyone's listening, hear this from us, you are a son of God because you've received the inheritance of God.

Exactly. So if you have a Bible that reads sons and daughters, that's wrong. It's not sons and daughters, it's just sons.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's the importance of- Being a son, being adopted is the inheritance.

Yeah. And the son is always given the inheritance. Right.

Biblically, that's what we see laid out. Right. And that's why Christ is, he's preeminent.

He's given. Right. He's handed, again, we read that at the beginning because that is Christ's inheritance as the son of God is what he's Daniel seven.

He's given a kingdom that cannot be shaken. And he has that kingdom now, folks. That's the thing.

We're not pre-millennial. We're not waiting for his kingdom. That's big.

But I also want us to notice the eschatological nature of an inheritance. And I wanted to say that to connect it to the kingdom. In the Beatitudes, Christ says, "The meek shall inherit the earth." So our inheritance is a great kingdom that includes a redeemed earth.

And when we look at Romans eight, the creation groans and is awaiting redemption, just like we were awaiting redemption. We have been redeemed and we now inherit a redeemed earth with redeemed morals, redeemed conscience, redeemed mind. Our minds are being renewed every day, redeemed bodies soon enough.

And then the last enemy to be defeated is death. So this is the nature of the kingdom. It has, being a son and having an inheritance in that, inheriting the earth, looking for Christ inherited the kingdom.

Now we vicariously inherit that kingdom because he gave us authority. Because he has all authority. He's given his apostles and then by default, the church, the authority or the keys of the kingdom.

So I just wanted to highlight that because as a son of God, you do have an inheritance to look forward to, which is all those things I just laid out. Yeah. And that's not to say that you don't partake of these inheritances and blessings even now, because when you look in Ephesians chapter one, let's actually flip there.

It says, and this is a very important passage right here. It says, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ Jesus with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. This is a present blessing.

And it's not a blessing that comes later on. This is something that we have currently as sons. And verse four says, even as he chose us and him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blame us before him and love.

He predestined us for what? For adoption to himself as sons to Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved. So again, we see the grounding. The reason we have adoption is because of the for ordination of God and based upon the ground of Jesus Christ's death.

But what we have now is we've received this inheritance and we still look forward to it. We have the blessings. We've been blessed in Christ Jesus with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

We already have these blessings. So we shouldn't be speaking as if everything is future and there's no present reality. But at the same time, we cannot make the same error and think that we have everything now.

There is a glory that awaits in the future. And that's why when Rocky quoted from Romans eight, the creation groans for that redemption. And what are they groaning and waiting for? It says for the appearing of the sons of God.

They're waiting for us to be appeared in full glory at the redemption and consummation of all things. When Jesus will come back and deliver his kingdom to the kingdom up to the father, and he will rule righteously and with justice and equity for all time. Yeah.

Ever and ever and ever. So that's not something just in the future. It's something now that we're longing and looking forward to the full final consummate reality of that.

Yeah. And that's the inheritance. Exactly.

Yeah. But you have it, the blessings now. Exactly.

Every spiritual blessing. Exactly. Yeah.

And that's why as sons, we were waitful. We wait. We're supposed to be vigilant.

Right. When brothers walk together in unity, the way that we do that is we're waiting for the glorious appearing of Christ Jesus. Yep.

Right. And we wait not passively, but actively. We wait as sons as if we are jealous and zealous for this inheritance.

Right. We seek to press into the kingdom of God. So this is, this is, there's multifaceted with adoption.

Adoption, you can go in so many different ways, but at the core of it, we were not God's sons and he adopted us on the basis of Christ's blood. Yeah. And this is a beautiful part of the gospel.

Exactly. It's necessary. It's a facet of the gospel.

The gospel has so many, it's like a diamond. Every, there's so many little facets to it. And every, every face of it is blowing you away fresh and anew each time.

Yeah. And then it shows you how much Christ has done for us. So be encouraged.

Know that you are, if you are in Christ, if you have repented and placed your faith in Christ and that faith is alive, you're a son and you have an inheritance, which is good news for you and for others. So go and tell them, go proclaim the gospel, tell, tell the good news of the King. I think that's it.

So thanks for listening to the For the King podcast and tuning in. We have a Facebook page and I put all that in the notes and the texts we go through the different verses is in the notes. You can reach me at for the king podcast at gmail.com if you have question or an inquiry and you can always donate cryptocurrency or you can go to my website at for the king podcast.com and donate there if you feel inclined.

Now I always end with a doxology. So this one is going to be from second Corinthians chapter 13 verse 14. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the holy spirit be with you all.

Soli Deo Gloria. Okay.

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