Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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Let's hear God's word now, from
Romans, Chapter Nine, verses a,
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one through six. One through six, I am speaking the truth in Christ,
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I am not lying. My conscience
bears me witness in the Holy Spirit
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that I have great sorrow and unceasing
anguish in my heart, for I could
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wish that, for I could wish
that I myself were accursed and cut off
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from Christ for the sake of my
brothers, my kinsmen. According to the
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flesh, they are Israelites, and
to them belong the adoption, the glory,
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the Covenant, the giving of the
law, the worship and the promises.
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To Them Belong the Patriarchs, and
from their race, according to the
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Flesh, is the Christ, who
is God over all, blessed forever.
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Amen. But it is not as
though the word of God has failed,
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for not all who are descended from
Israel belong to Israel. He may be
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seated. I want to speak to
you today from the Bible, about adoption,
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adoption. I'm not human adoption,
but divine adoption. How many of
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you have experienced human adoption? Many
of you who are here today have been
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adopted or are siblings of someone who
has been adopted, or our parents who
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have adopted or friends of those who
have adopted. I'm all of you here,
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have most of you here any way
of experienced human adoption and some form
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or another, but all of you
who are baptized members of the Church have
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also experienced divine adoption, in which
you have been brought in not just to
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a human family but a family of
God, and this is a remarkable thing.
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Now, you might ask, are
we not all children of God?
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And that is true. When God
made his Covenant With Adam, when God
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made us, and as our creator, in a very real sense, the
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Bible describes us even as a sons
of God, as people that in which
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were made by him and in his
image. By virtue of God's Covenant With
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Adam and his posterity, we are
all Christians and Non Christians alike, God's
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children. Therefore, we sometimes refer
to strangers and people even outside of the
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church, as brother or sister,
because we are all made in God's image.
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But when the Bible speaks of adoption, it speaks of something else,
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a kind of special choosing and electing
love that human adoption shows as well.
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When the Bible speaks of adoption,
most often it has in mind, this
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kind of adoption that takes a child
of Adam and makes him a child of
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Abraham. It's a way of speaking
covenantally. It's a way of saying that
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those who are made in God's image
are now made in another image, and
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according to another covenant, This is
explained by something that happens in between these
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two things. I think many of
you know what that is. It's,
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of course, the fall into sin. Man, who has made in God's
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image. The his great son,
disobeyed and in the covenant that God made
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with him, he was cast out
of God's presence. He was sent away.
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There was an angel that was sent
to bar the gate so that man
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and God could not commune together in
the way that he once did. The
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Sun, so to speak, was
cast out, was was banished, was
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sent away from the family. And
so Ephesians two three describes this group of
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people known as humanity as children of
Wrath. Even we are described as children
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of the devil, people that did, instead of listening to the father that
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made them, the one who created
them, listen to Satan enjoined their selves
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to him and sought to do his
will instead. Ephesians two three says that
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we were by nature children of Wrath. Well, this is where adoption comes
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in. God then chooses, he
sets these special electing love on people and
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says, I'm going to rescue out
of that. Instead of a child of
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Wrath, which you are, I
will make you a son or daughter of
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the Living God. I mentioned effusions
two three, where it describes humanity as
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children of Wrath, but effusions one
five says that the when God and his
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electing love has predestined us for adoption
as sons, no longer in this category,
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no longer belonging to this family,
but now to a new family.
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So this is adoption. It's God's
giving a right to people who are once
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children of Wrath, the right to
be treated as his legitimate children. So
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this is God. What God wants
you to know about him this morning.
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It what it's what he wants you
to know about his great love in a
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option, first to the Jew and
then to the gentile. But before we
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think about this in particular, let's
briefly consider the context of what's going on
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here. I mentioning adoption because it's
the first in this list of things Paul
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mentions. It's you see it there
in verse four. They are Israelites and
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to them belong, the adoption,
the glory, the covenants, the giving
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of the law, the worship and
the promises. And then in verse five
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he also mentions the patriarch. So
what is this list? What's Paul doing
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in this section? Well, each
of these things is part of something greater.
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Consider our hometown here, Tucson,
and the Sonoran desert. In July.
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There's a lot of things that happened
during this month. Right, big
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clouds billow up over the mountains,
toads and frogs start a pearing in wet
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areas, insects come out, the
creosote starts releasing all of its oils when
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it rains. All of these things
happen and we put this name on them.
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Right, we call it the monsoon
season. It's kind of our second
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spring, I heard one writer describe
it, when, after the sort of
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protracted period in February through April,
we get this sort of second spring,
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another set of flowers, another set
of green and and water. The point
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as you have all of these things
kind of coming together and which are described
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and paint a picture of something larger. That happens a kind of a season
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in our desert. Well, Paul's
doing something similar here. He's pointing out
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all of these different things to give
us a sense of something greater. He
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wants us to recognize without a doubt, God's great love for the Biological Children
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of Abraham. He's selling us his
own heart, isn't he? He's saying
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he's showing us God's love through his
own love for the Jews. Listen to
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the couple ways in which he does
this. First, he speaks of his
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heart. He says, I'm speaking
the truth in Christ. This is verse
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one. I'm not lying. My
conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit.
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These are strong words, aren't they? If you said something like this,
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you would be saying something that is
one of the most important things to
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you, to confirm it over and
over in this way. What does he
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want to confirm? He says it
in verse two. I have great sorrow
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and unceasing anguish in my heart.
He goes on to say, I could
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wish that I myself were a cursed
and cut off from Christ for the sake
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of my brothers, my kinsman,
according to the flesh, Paul has been
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speaking for eight chapters about faith in
Christ, about the gentiles being able to
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come in, belonging to these Great
Covenant Promises of grace, no longer being
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an adom but now being in Christ. But there's this question that's left over.
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What about the Jews? What about
all of these Jews who are not
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believing? What about the Jews who
crucified the Lord Jesus Christ? What about
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the Jews? Yes, the gentiles
are coming in. Yes, Paul describes
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them as even children of Abraham through
faith. But what about the Jews?
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Does Paul not care about them anymore? Does God not care about them anymore?
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Has God moved on? You blew
it, he says to his people,
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I'm done with you, or is
there something else going on? Well,
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the Lord's Apostle speaks and says there
is something else going on, and
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through the rest of this chapter and
Chapter Ten and chapter eleven, he's going
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to be describing for us this relationship
between Jew and non Jew, between Jew
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and gentile, how, in the
great history of God's redemptive plan, these
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two groups are both distinct and united, how they interact together, how they
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work together, how God is doing
things in the world so that, as
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he says in Verse Five, He
Christ will be God over all. Both
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Jew and gentile. This is the
context in which he's speaking. Paul gives
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this list of things towards this end. So first he tells us his heart.
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Essentially, I love these people.
If it were possible for me to
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be cut off from Christ I would
willingly do it so that others could be
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included. My kinsman according to the
flesh. And then he even uses this
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term Israelites. It's not a term
he's been using up to this point.
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It's another way of sort of comframing
what his ideas are about these people.
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Up to this point he's been talking
about Jews, a very kind of political
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and national term. Now he talks
about Israelites, same group of people,
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a different perspective. He's talking about
to the people that God made covenant promises
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to, to the one that God
and renamed Israel. And what does he
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say? He says, not only
do I have love for them, but
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consider the love of God. To
them belong the adoption, which will focus
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on today. To them belong the
glory, the covenants, the giving of
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the law, the worship and the
promises. He might say it this way
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if he were speaking to us,
to you, does not belong the adoption
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the glory, the covenants, the
giving of the law, the worship,
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the promises in the Patriarchs. There's
a very real sense in which me,
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as a gentile, this is not
me, this is not my story.
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This story is the story that belongs
to the Jews, to the Israelites.
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It belongs to them. God has
shown special attention to them in history and
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Paul wants to make sure that we
as gentiles, know that. He wants
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to make sure the Jews, as
his specially adopted people, also know that.
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Now there's lots of implications to that, which will have to get to
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later, but what I want to
do is focus on just one of these
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things today, and then another next
week, and then another in the week
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after that and another week after that, and hopefully what you'll come to see
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is these big things that Paul's mentioning, adoption, covenant, Giving Of the
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Law, Patriarchs, all fitting together
into this puzzle that shows you this great
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thing that God has done for the
Jews, for the Israelites, his people.
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If you are a person, if
you're a Christian, who never thinks
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about the Jews, the Israelites,
who more or less ignores the Old Testament,
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who doesn't think about these kinds of
things. This is a wakeup call
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for you to remember what God has
done, to see his love that has
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been poured out on this people.
But it's also an opportunity for us a
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gentiles, for us non Jews,
to begin to see what it is we
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have been connected to. In later
on in these chapters, Paul is going
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to describe the gentiles as like a
wild olive branch that's being grafted on to
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this tree that's described here. So
this means that in as these things are
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described, adoption, glory, covenants, etc. And we say, as
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I say, these do not belong
to me, I am not a Jew.
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On the other hand, by faith, by in grafting, by Christ,
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they do belong to us. They
become a part of our story,
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and that's another one of the payoffs, so to speak, of thinking about
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this thing. Though you may not
be a Jew, I think that's true
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for most of us here. This
becomes our story. We get adopted,
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as we will see, into a
family, into a family in which this
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story, though we didn't participate in
it, that we didn't belong to it,
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originally becomes our story, a way
in which the old testament isn't just
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something that happened to another people group
at some point in time, but it
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comes our family history. So here's
how I want you, how God wants
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you to listen to this passage and
and the ones following. It's like you,
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as a an adopted child, are
brought into the family and God sit
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you down on the couch and opens
up the family photo album and says,
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let me show you what you belong
to. You're new, I understand that,
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you're different, I understand that,
but let me show you what belongs
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to you, what church you are
joining. To them belong the adoption,
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the glory, the covenants, the
giving of the law, the worship,
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the promises, the Patriarchs. And
you know what, now it belongs to
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you too. Well, thank you
for bearing with my long introduction, but
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I hope you're properly seated now on
the family couch, ready to look at
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these pictures. And we're going to
look at the first one. Adoption.
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What does God mean when he says
that the Jews, the Israelites, were
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adopted? How was the old church, as we might call them, and
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ourselves, adopted? When we adopted
our son? There was an adoption day
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that happened. There was an actual
moment in time, I suppose even a
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precise minute we could we could point
at and say this is when he was
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adopted. It was an adoption day, not only for him but for lots
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of people. There was a park
here in Tucson filled, and many of
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you were there for this, a
filled with families all under these RAMADAS,
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adopting children. Judges asking families,
will you treat this child as your own?
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Will you give to them all the
benefits that you would give to an
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as you might give to a natural
born child? Yes, the parents promise
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and say, and in this the
child is adopted. Well, what about
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Israel? When was their adoption day? Well, it's not as easy,
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I think, to pin down as
it might be for this day in which
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these children were adopted together and these
court rooms in the park. But there
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are things that the scriptures point to
that help us to understand a considering the
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fall. We might start with genesis
three fifteen, when God says to Eve,
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I will give you a son who
will come and save you from the
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serpent, who will save you from
your sin. That promise is is fulfilled
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and made more explicit then in Genesis
Chapter Twelve, we're God speaks to Abram,
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Abraham, and says this. He
says, go from your country and
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from your kindred and your father's house
to the land that I will show you.
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You see what God's do being here. He's taking Abraham from one household,
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in a sense moving him from a
nut to another. He's moving him
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away. And what is he going
to do with this Abraham? He says,
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I will make of you a great
nation and I will bless you and
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make your name great so that you
will be a blessing. I will bless
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you, I will bless those who
bless you, and him who dishonors you
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I will curse, and in you
all the families on the earth will be
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blessed. Then later on we read
in a similar way in genesis seventeen of
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verses seven through eight. I will
establish my covenant between me and you and
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your offspring after you, throughout their
generations, for an everlasting covenant to be
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God to you and to your offspring
after you, and I will give to
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you and to your offspring after you
the land of your sojournings, all the
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land of Canaan, for an everlasting
possession, and I will be their God.
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So you see what God does.
He says to Abraham, I am
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electing you, I am choosing you, and in you I'm going to do
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something special for you and for your
offspring after you, for you and your
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children. I will make you a
great nation. I will bless you with
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an everlasting covenant. I will bring
you in to the land of Canaan for
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an everlasting possession. He says.
Well, this is a beginning of those
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promises that are made. When God
says I will be their God. He
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says that right. He says I
will be their God in the end of
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Verse Eight. There in genesis seventeen, I will watch over them, I
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will protect them, I will keep
them as sons. I will give them
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this land. You see, they're
going to be treated as sons, they're
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going to be given and inheritance.
Now listen to exodus for verse versus Twenty
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Two through Twenty three, and let
this put chills down your spine. Exodus
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for Verse Twenty Two and Twenty Three, a God says to Moses to speak
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to Pharaoh, who wouldn't let his
people go. Says, then you shall
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say to Pharaoh. Thus says the
Lord Israel is my firstborn son, and
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I say to you, let my
son go that he may serve me.
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If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn
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son. Is God treating his children
as sons? Yes, he is.
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He is protecting them, he is
keeping them, he is going to fight
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for them. They belong to him. Well, you can begin to see
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that this adoption of the Israelites,
this bringing in, gives them certain benefits.
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The first group of benefits we could
call external and temporary benefits. So,
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for example, let me read from
to you, from Deuteronomy one thirty
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one. What are the external and
temporary benefits that they receive? Well,
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rescue from Egypt, right. And
then, after rescue from Egypt, we
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read this of their wilderness wanderings.
We read in Verse Thirty Jehovah, Your
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God, who goes before you,
will himself fight for you, just as
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he did for you in Egypt,
before your eyes, in the Wilderness,
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where you have seen how Jehovah,
your God, carried you, as a
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man carries his son, all the
way that you went until you came to
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this place. You see what God
is saying here. He's saying he didn't
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just rescue out him out of Egypt. He didn't just drop them off in
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the Wilderness and say, all right, there's the promised land. Hope you
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enjoy it. Write me when you
get there, give me a phone call.
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No, he picked his son up
and he carried him through snakes and
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desert, through enemy lands, and
we read of that history, how God
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defeated Og and Basin, how a
so and so I han. We read
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how he provided for them bread and
the Wilderness bred from heaven itself. Talk
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about God providing for your daily bread. Here you are, my son,
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let it rain down bread for you. He carried Israel through the Wilderness as
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a son. This is the benefit
of being adopted by God. Or again,
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in Deuteronomy versus eight five, we
read another aspect of this sonship,
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the benefits. I'm he says.
No, then in your heart that as
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a man, is discipline, that
a man, that as a man,
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disciplines his son. Jehovah, your
God, disciplines you. Well, this
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is where we all recognize that there
is a difficult but also necessary aspect of
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sonship. Isn't there a father who
loves his children, will discipline them,
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will train them, will show them
and teach them, and this is indeed
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what God does, and this was
not always easy. We read that after
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God has adopted and chosen this,
a family of family, as his own,
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Israel, as his son, he
brings them into this period. They
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are in this period of of being
youths, of being disciplined. In Galatians,
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for Paula says that it was a
so strong that you could even be
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described as a slavery. It was
a hard growing up for Israel. The
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law came down, just like parents
do right when your kids are young.
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What do you do? Here's the
rules, black and white. You do
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this, you don't do that,
you do this, you don't do that,
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and that's what we read of throughout
the history of Israel, don't we?
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God giving his laws, God giving
his command saying here's where I want
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you to obey, and all of
these various things. And it was to
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train them in two things, one
in the righteousness that God requires and too,
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in their inability to do the things
that he requires. One in the
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righteousness that he requires and two in
their inability to do the things that he
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requires. God was constantly teaching them
here is the standard, and you are
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not capable of meeting that now.
Was He doing that to be mean,
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a father who never loves because his
standards are too high? Of course not.
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God standards are high because that's what
holiness is, that's what righteousness is,
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and he wanted to show it to
us, not just to shame us
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or embarrass us, but so that
we would see our need for him,
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our need for salvation, that would
come through a son who would be born
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under the law to redeem those who
are under the law, he says in
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Galatians, so that we might receive
adoption as sons. There is this kind
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of emancipation that's coming, a growing
up, a maturity for the old church
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that comes when Jesus comes throughout the
whole Old Testament. Israel, God's adopted
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son, is learning through these external
and temporary blessings and external and temporary curses,
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that they're not capable of doing the
things that he requires, that they
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need their father to act in another
way, not just in the law but
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in the Gospel. They need him
to act according to His grace and according
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to His mercy. They need him
to change not just their outward circumstances,
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not in Egypt or in Egypt,
not in Egypt in the wilderness. Not
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In the Wilderness. They need their
hearts changed inside. It's one thing to
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hear of the promises, to have
them offered to you, to have them
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signified in this external way. It's
another thing to actually receive the things that
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they signify. In other words,
it's one thing to enter into the land
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of cane and enjoy the milk and
honey and all those things. It's another
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thing to enter into heaven itself,
the thing which can and pointed to,
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and enjoy boy everlasting blessing from God. And between these two things, Israel,
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God's adopted son, experienced a kind
of wall between the external things that
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were offered, all the blessings that
were given there, and the internal spiritual
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changes that happened. There was this
wall that happened, a wall that could
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not be climbed over by obedience,
and we know that because they failed over
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and over and over again, and
even the most righteous of them, King
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David, King Solomon, Moses,
they failed. Do you remember that there
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were some people who actually didn't enter
into the Promised Land? And do you
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remember that one of them was Moses? Because of his sin, Moses,
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the Great Mediator of the Old Covenant, Moses, this Great Holy and righteousness
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will, righteous one, Moses,
who was adopted by Pharaoh's daughter and God's
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providence so that he could adopt a
whole nation of people for himself. Moses
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didn't enter. Moses wasn't righteous enough
to enter into the promised land, not
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the earthly anyway. There is this
Great Wall between the external blessings that were
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given in the Covenant, the adoption
that was given in the Covenant and the
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promises that and were received and fulfilled. But what has Paul been saying throughout
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Romans? He's saying that there's a
way through that wall, and the gate
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is called faith. He's saying you
don't have to climb over the wall.
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He's going to say later on you
don't have to go up to heaven and
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pull Christ down in order to have
Christ, in order to have salvation.
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You don't have to drag Christ up
out of the grave either. He says
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you don't have to dig up under
that wall in order to get into the
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promised land in order to receive God
and Heaven and the blessings of a changed
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life inside and in the eternal,
imperishable inheritance. You can receive it all
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through faith. You have to go
back to glacians for to read Paul's explanation
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of these things, but you know
who he points to to talk about this
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faith. He points to Abraham,
he points to David and he says,
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look at these men, look at
how they received a righteousness that was not
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by works, but a righteousness that
was by faith. They believed and it
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was counted to them as righteousness.
They received Jesus's righteousness. God gave to
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them what they need so that they
could break through that wall and receive not
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just the signs, not just the
external blessings and the promises, but actually
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receive the things that they pointed to. Receive Eternal things, heavenly things,
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receive the forgiveness of sins. Let
me relax with a little bit and give
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you a silly analogy. How many
of you, on let's say December twelve,
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or maybe January second, said,
you know what, I'm going to
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get a gym membership, and you
go over to the gym and you you
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sign up and you you get your
card and you're a member now and you're
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excited and you're gonna get strong and
you're going to get ripped and you're going
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to lose weight because you're the member
of a gym now and then about April
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you kind of go, man,
I should probably turn this thing and why?
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Because it's not enough to have a
membership to something unless you're actually getting
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the benefits of it right. It's
not. It's not a helpful thing to
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be connected to something externally, to
have a sign, a card that says
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here, I, I belong to
this place. You really do. You
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paid it for it your you have
every right to go in any time you
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want, maybe even twenty four hours
a day, complete access. But if
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you don't go, if you don't
show up, if you don't get on
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the bench, how are you going
to benefit from it? It's the same
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thing with the Covenant of Grace.
God adopts the Old Church and he adopts
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us as well. In the new
church. He brings in all who profess
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their faith and their children, as
Peter says, just as he did in
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the old and we receive children.
You have received this sign of baptism.
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We've all received this sign and are
brought in to belong to the church.
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But does the car do you any
good if you don't believe for the gym,
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you're called to go and exercise your
muscles. In the Covenant of Grace,
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you're called to exercise faith, which
means receiving and accepting and believing on
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the Lord Jesus Christ. Without that, membership in the church certainly has advantages.
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You're getting to hear the Gospel,
you're belonging to a community of faith,
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your you're receiving God's word. There
are even external benefits, real external
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benefits, of belonging the care and
compassion you were receive, training and righteousness,
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all kinds of good things, but
only by faith, only by faith
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will we receive those things signified and
promised. This is why Paul is so
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grieved, because he looks at his
kinsman, he says, these are my
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brothers. He looks at his family, he says, guys, this is
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not good. We have rejected the
promises. We've been like Esau, who
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had a birthright and sold it away, who gave it away. He is
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grieved to his very heart, and
we should be too. When we think
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about the Jews, when we think
about those who have received all of these
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great blessings, who have belonged under
Moses, to God in Abraham, were
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called into this covenant of Grace and
yet don't believe in Jesus. They remain
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on the other side of that wall, and that should grieve us. If
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we believe in Jesus, if we
have received these things, if we know
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the spirit of adoption that is changed
our hearts, should we not speak to
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them and other general tiles like us
who didn't even receive that? We must,
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we must love and we must preach, and some of US need to
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grieve for ourselves, because we and
belonging to this new church and being grafted
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on, know that it's only in
an external way. Some of US need
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to look at our hearts and see
what's going on inside and recognize and admit
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the truth that, though we belong
in a kind of outward in an external
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way, we're not abiding in Christ. Did you aren't following after him,
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you aren't trusting in him, you
aren't living in him, you aren't walking
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in him. And if that's the
case, grieve for yourself, let your
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heart ache for yourself, let you
feel the anguish that Paul feels. But
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of course, don't stop there.
Turn to Jesus, walk through the gate
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and this Great Wall, receive the
promises that are offered to you, except
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the God of your salvation, because
this is what God promises and this promise
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is available to all who do believe, Jew and gentile alike, that there
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is salvation, forgiveness of sins communion
with God. I'll simply quote one verse
385
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from the beginning of Romans, Paul
says, and will it verses one,
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sixteen and Seventeen, for I am
not ashamed of the Gospel. This good
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news about Jesus Christ, who has
come into the world to save sinners from
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their sin, he says. I'm
not ashamed of the Gospel, for it
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is the power of God for salvation
to everyone who believes, to the Jew
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first, and also to the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God
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is revealed from faith, for faith, as it is written, the righteous
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shall live by faith. So,
whether you are Jew or whether you are
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a gentile, a Greek, the
same power of God unto adoption, eternal
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adoption, adoption filled with inheritance and
blessings that can never go away, the
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can never fade or die. These
are offered to us in Christ. So
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put your faith in him, believe
on him and him alone, and receive
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these blessings that are given to us
in him. Let us pray
