Adoption in the Bible isn't about Babies

Heavenly Father we thank you for the Word of God we thank you for the Bible been given to us to edify us to make us strong to build your church we ask that today as we open it up that you would do that Holy Spirit be the teacher give us understanding and wisdom and may we grow and mature in our knowledge of Christ and our love for one another amen going to talk to you today about God's family and the idea of adoption and probably sounds really boring just to say like that so don't just assume you know everything about that and say oh he goes a boring sermon no no pay attention because you'll probably learn something I'm almost certain you will we're going to read from Ephesians chapter 1 verses 1 through 14 in just a minute but I actually had the had a Bible College assessment last year and I had to translate this passage from Greek into English for assessment and so it's I get these translation assessments you know about every few weeks they give you a chaplain you've got to do it so and I've translated quite a lot of the book of Revelation at the start of last year and I found the book of Revelation a lot of fun to translate and when I got to this book of Ephesians and started translating my thought was oh my gosh what's going on here this passage believe it or not I think it's from first one through the verse 21 has no punctuation there's not a full stop for about 200 something plus words and I was really struggling even to know what things were joind about things and English and Greek had quite different languages and in English the order of the words is really important and full stops are really important in Greek punctuation is much less important and you know which words belong to which because of things like tense and mood and all of that scene you know certain things the subject of the sentence but then you've got this passage of Ephesians all I can say is that when John wrote revelation Greek was his second language he was stuck on an island with no help and it was very simply written great for new translators I guess Paul was a complicated natural Greek speaking fellow around all these clauses together with some elaborate speech leaving poor people like me confused 2,000 years later so anyway what we're gonna look at now is a passage and some people do say that Paul's writing can be quite complicated you know sometimes you're not sure he always keeps like adding on another thing and adding on another thing if you've ever read Paul you'll see that that's kind of his style you know this passage is like that there's always these things that keep getting added on well I think you've got to take the lot as one great big blob of blessings from God and today we're going to read verses 1 to 14 and we're gonna pull out some things but I think will help you see it some new ideas so start in verse 1 Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God to God's holy people in Ephesus the faithful in Jesus Christ it's really really interesting because in lots of the early Scrolls the words in Ephesus are missing but in some of them they're there and it's interesting when you read the book of Ephesians it seems like he's writing to people he doesn't know all that well whereas when you read the book of Acts you know that I he spent three years in Ephesus he should have known those people really well well apparently what happened here was this was an in cyclic a lever was actually written to lots of churches and he just left a blank in the letter where the words in Ephesus were and whoever would go to the church whatever Church it was layout to see or Philip I would read the letter out and when they got to that part would just say to the church where am I in Ephesus and would just say that well some of the copies actually had the name written in so there's actually copies of the scroll with the words in Ephesus and that's some of the early copies we got so that's why it's called the letter to Ephesians but it's actually the letter to Allah churches and these were Gentile Christians so these were people who didn't know all the old Jewish traditions they didn't know the Old Testament but these were pagan people who'd just grown up with a Greek culture in the Roman world and so this is the letter to the Ephesians but it's written to not just people from Ephesus but to lots of Greek cultured minded people so to God's holy people in Ephesus and lots of other places even in Rockhampton you could say written to us the faithful in Christ Jesus grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ praise be to God to the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ for he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight in love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will so the praise of his glorious grace which he is freely given in the one he loves in him we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times reached their fulfillment to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ in him we were also chosen having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will in order that we who were the first to put our hope in Christ might be for the praise of his glory and you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth the gospel of your salvation when you believed you were marked in him with a seal the promised Holy Spirit who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession to the praise of his glory there's so much in that passage to just read it like that you'd almost feel like you didn't get anything out of it because it's just like a lot of stuff and you you've got to read it slow and thoughtfully because each phrase is a whole idea and so just do that in your own spare time but there's some thoughts we're going to pull out of here and one of the thoughts is in verse 5 it says he predestined us to adoption or for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ so the idea of us being adopted as sons is right there in the middle of this passage and further down around about verse 11 it says that we were also predestined and it goes on to talk about inheritance the idea that we would get an inheritance from God ok so the idea is in here that God has adopted us and when we read a passage like this without knowing too much about what Paul might actually be meaning we just think of adoption the way we think of adoption you know poor mum and dad struggling to have some kids really wanted to have kids they thought that adopt a kid you know and you know God he just wanted some kids and he just thought he'd adopt a few and lucky us we get to be adopted well that's kind of how we might just think of adoption if we didn't understand what Paul meant when he said adoption and what all these Gentile and pagan people understood when they heard that they were adopted and so it's worthwhile taking a few minutes to learn what adoption actually was in the time of the Roman Empire and even in the Greek Empire before the Romans what was adoption to those people because they didn't adopt kids one of the things with adopting the reason they didn't adopt kids is because most of the time kids never made it through to adulthood there's a huge percentage about 1/3 even up to 1/2 of children just didn't survive into adulthood it was a huge amount of kids died at birth then they say the first five days was common for children to die from infections and then there was you know if they got to five they had a chance but you'd never if you haven't struggling if you were struggling with to have children you'd never adopt a kid because you had no guarantee that kid would actually survive and in the Roman Empire they adopted generally young men who were already 15 16 17 or even sometimes fully adults that's who they would adopt so they would adopt people generally he'll mature someone they already knew well and imagine that imagine if he could choose your kids and you could choose the ones that turned out good you know he's making a name for himself I'll adopt you well that's what Julius Caesar did Julius Caesar adopted a young fellow by the name of Gaius Octavius furious he thought he'd adopt him because he was a good bloke and actually he adopted him in his will so this Octavius bloke wasn't adopted until Julius Caesar actually died so when Julius Caesar died in his will was adoption for this other bloke called Octavius who became known as Augustus Caesar so or Gustus Caesar would never have become Caesar he wasn't or dub adopted by Julius but Julius didn't adopt a baby no he considered who he wanted to adopt because he had he had no kids he had no adult heir or like no son to take over so he wanted to adopt the right type of person to continue on his his you know legacy family line whatever so we adopted this Octavius his name was Gaius Octavius furious and when someone would be adopted they would lose their name their name was gone they would take on the new name so he became Gaius Julius Caesar so it kept the Gaius part I'm not sure how that works but his family name was gone and he became a Julius instead of Octavius and one of the things that used to happen was that if in the Roman Empire if there was no police no police forcing the Roman Empire there was a military but if there was a murder say for example he was up to the say the dad and a family got murdered he was up to the son to avenge the murder and that was the justice system so when Julius Caesar gets assassinated by Brutus some of you know your history and bloke called Brutus SAS Knights Julius Caesar in the Senate and then in the will Julius Caesar's adopted this bloke called Augustus Augustus responsibility he doesn't only just get the privilege of being this prominent figure straightaway he also gets responsibilities he comes with these responsibilities and one of them is immediately to avenge the death of his father now it's not actually his biological father but according to Roman law it's his father you can't get any more solidly his father than it's his father so adoption was as real a thing as being biologically born in the Roman world there's no difference if you adopted as a son or born as a son same thing there's actually court cases between biological have adopted sons arguing over who was going to get the inheritance because they're both equally entitled it both as as formally sons as each other and there was there's even stories of a father only having daughters wanting his daughters to be cared for so adopting a son or a slave to marry his daughter so that his daughter could continue to inherit his iron positions because daughters weren't allowed to get anything so there's all sorts of things are going on in the Roman world interesting court cases you can read of things that got said and but anyway so of course or Gustus Caesar does if you know your history he does avenge the death of his father I'm not saying it's a Christian good thing but this is just what happened and he ends up you know hunting down all the the co-conspirators of Julius Caesar's death sorts all of that out has a few little other loose ends to tie up like bumping off Martin Mark Antony in Egypt securing the Roman Empire and becoming you know Caesar so that's all history and when someone was adopted they they had on one hand the great privileges of whatever their father owned the inheritance that was all theirs it was really all theirs but on the other hand it came with lots of responsibilities so for example a lot of people would adopt not when they were dead in their will but they would adopt while they were still alive because one of the legal responsibilities of the son was to care for their father in the their old age there's no pensions no center links no superannuation and in your old age if you had slaves like a lot of Roman people did you couldn't trust the slaves when you got older because they knew that you're getting weak and you couldn't kind of you know keep up with things so what you do what was really common was they would pick a slave they really did trust someone they'd known a long time someone would serve faithful and adopt that guy now he becomes the son of the family so now he's responsible for caring for you legally into your old age and you know you'll get looked after and he also looks after all the other slaves so it's just a way that it would work so becoming adopted was a great benefit like if you imagine you're a slave you've got no hope in life next thing you get adopted you beauty it's a real opportunity to get ahead now you're free you've got a family named slaves don't have family status you've got a family you've got rights you've got now you've got yeah you know a position you've got inheritance you can have children your children will be free it's just a wonderful change in circumstances and of course it's it's a real incentive to slaves to serve their master faithfully because they know there's this potential for being adopted as a son and so all of this is kind of in the minds everyone understands this is how adoption works in the Roman Empire and but for poor people if you a poor man and you get old and you're wondering who's gonna care for me in my old age and you say oh I'm gonna adopt someone well now I want you to adopt them because they don't want the responsibility of caring for some old bloke that hasn't got any inheritance to give you you know I'm trying to say it's only the wealthy or the least middle class upper that adopted because the poor people no one wanted to be adopted by a poor person because it's all responsibilities and no privileges but when you get adopted by wealthy people yes responsibilities are there but privileges are there too so it's it's a two-sided thing so we read in the bottom you think about Paul no when I stood up and read to you that first 14 verses of Ephesians a few minutes ago was our year high year our year God's predestined us to adoption oh yeah that's all great when Paul or tercius saw it tatata whoever it was that stood up and read this letter to the Ephesians when he said that God has predestined you for adoption into sonship it would be a pretty mind-blowing idea for the majority of people sitting in the congregation right there because the congregation would have been full of slaves for starters but it also have been full of other people of middle class rank and probably a few wealthy people as well and properly a handful of Jews the Jews would always had this idea that they were God's family but there was not that idea didn't exist with Gentile thinkers so that would have been an amazing idea for them to think that I trade in my family name God gives me a family name I am entitled to what belongs to God what's God is mine but along with it responsibilities but of course people who understood it properly would want the responsibilities they would want the inheritance and along with it they would eagerly accept the responsibilities and want the adoption as sons because they knew you can't get any better than being adopted into gods family that's the ultimate scenario and so it would have been an enthusiastically heard letter this letter of the Ephesians when early Christians were hearing it being read so and by the way all Gustus adopted the next emperor tiberius there's a whole pattern with these Caesars awful adoptions I think there's a period there for 100 solid years where it's Caesars adopted one another in a row because a lot of the times they didn't trust their own sons and they just wanted you know they had a mind of what should happen and how it should happen and the way to make sure it would happen would be to adopt someone that's how strong the idea of adoption was because they knew the obligation on the son to do what the the obligation and the responsibilities was was strong and was serious they knew that they would get the outcome they want if they adopted the right person so it's it's very interesting to go and read you know like Trajan and Hadrian and all these guys they're all adopted into being Caesar quite an amazing thing girls were basically never adopted and unfortunately that's just a sign of the way that women were perceived in the Roman Empire now wealthy women in the Roman Empire was were quite different but most women were not considered worth adopting but we noticed here that when Paul writes to the Ephesians he tells them all women included that they're adopted imagine that a woman in the Roman Empire probably considered worth very little but to God value of all enough to adopt as a son not amazing imagine how you would have heard that no wonder there were way more women in the early church and there were men and because you know women have been oppressed and the gospel has always been such good news for them and may the Lord open the minds of men so that they will perceive what God has for them so the implications of this is that you are no longer slaves you now belong to a new family and you now take on the name of your father one of the things we struggle with is we like to take on the name of God we like to become a part of his family but we don't like to give up how old family we like to have a foot in each camp do you know that when Gaius Octavius theories became the son of Caesar he no longer had any legal responsibility to his biological father he didn't ever do anything for him now I don't know how he is biological dad thought about that and he may not even have been alive he may have been dead the average life expectancy was very very low and I've read different I've read one somewhere where it said it was 27 years of age I read somewhere else it was 40 something I don't know what it was but it was low and so I'd say octavius's father was probably dead but once you adopted into a new family your old family you didn't have any responsibilities anymore you weren't supposed to worry about them anymore he was supposed to worry about your new family now if you're a slave well that was great he didn't really have an old family you only had the new family but if sometimes a freed man got adopted well I guess they to be hard wouldn't it you'd still had family ties but you had your new family well that's the struggle that we often have when we come into God's family we still find our heart tied to the things of this world things that draw us they're attempting they're enticing and we tend to want to worry about them a lot but we're supposed to give ourselves completely to the responsibilities of God and what matters to him you're no longer you no longer belong to your old family and you lose the name of your old father you now have a responsibility to your new father to care and serve him you now have the privilege of inheritance what belongs to your father is yours and women in the church and in the body of Christ are also sons they're in the same position we're all sons in gods family we're gonna turn to Romans chapter 8 actually before we do I'm gonna go read Ephesians 1 to 5 again not the whole 14 verses but just read it again just because it's worthwhile reading again now that we've said those things and when you go home I think you should read it all again up to verse 14 slowly and thoughtfully so let's read verses 1 to 5 again Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God to God's Holy Family God's people in Ephesus the faithful in Christ Jesus grace and peace to you from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ praise be to God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing for he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight in love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and the will this would have been an amazing start to the letter for those early Christians let's go to Romans chapter 8 and we'll read verses 14 to 17 Paul talks about some similar things in Romans the book of Romans is written to Jews and Gentiles that the Roman Church was a mixture and of all different types of Christians in fact you know we we sometimes think wouldn't it be great if the body of Christ could all get along better and because our body of Christ that we know is split up into denominations so we have multiple meetings of the church every Sunday morning well the Roman Church they had multiple opinions about God as well but they were just all in the one place so when they gathered on a Sunday or Saturday or whenever they would gather it would be everyone would be there but they weren't all necessarily all agreeing with each other about everything and that's why in Romans 14 Paul says except one another you know we often hear that verse preached is kind of like a nice thing to say in church accept one another in Jesus no Paul was writing to a church they're all one big motley crew all in together Jews and Gentiles were all various thoughts and Paul saying for goodness sakes accept one another in Jesus Christ so they still had unity struggles as well and this Roman Church you know is half Jewish half Gentile and Paul is now talking about adoption and here as well and the Jews got the concept a lot easier than the Gentiles but here it is verses 14 3 to 17 for those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God the Spirit you receive does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again rather the spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship and by him we cry Abba Father the Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children now if we are children then we are heirs heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we also may share in his glory okay so how do we know we've been adopted into gods family well this first tells us it's if we have the spirit we know if you have the holy spirit if the Spirit testifies to you that you're God's child then you've been adopted into his family it says for those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God so you're one of God's you're in his family if the Holy Spirit is with you and says the spirit you receive does not make you slaves so that you live in fear but the Spirit you receive brought about your adoption and the Spirit testifies we are his children so if you want to be adopted into gods family it's asking the Lord to give you his spirit now when I was a young boy and I asked the Lord to come into my heart I didn't know that it was the Holy Spirit that was coming in I didn't have an complicate understanding of things and I just said Lord come into my heart and he came in I received the Holy Spirit I didn't realize it was the Holy Spirit but I received of God the Holy Spirit is God and so from that moment on I've never been in a doubt that I've belonged to him and for so many of you when you receive the Lord into your life it's the Spirit you receive and this is how you know that you're in God's family and if you want to be in God's family this is what you ask I say Lord I want to be in your family I want to be one of your children I want to belong to you give me your Holy Spirit fill me with fill me with your presence make me one of your children and you can desire to be a member of with God and a part of his family and in doing so you'll become one of his children and then you'll have the journey of learning who he is learning how to love him and serve him it's not all privileges only its responsibilities - and we notice here in verse 17 it says if we are children then we are heirs that's the privileges and co-heirs with Christ because we become you know Christ is the only begotten Son of God he's the first son only begotten doesn't mean he was made it means he's kind of eternally been a son this whole thing about sonship confuses people but Jesus was never created there's never a moment when in the moment of his creation God became a father and a son now God's always eternally being a father and a son and that's what only begotten means if you take the time to understand it and so Christ has always been a son but when we come into the family of God we become co-heirs with Christ we become sons of God along with Jesus and that's quite an incredible idea and along with the privileges it says if indeed we share in his sufferings in all the order that we also may share in his glory that there is the responsibility side the willingness to shoulder the burden to serve the Lord whatever may come along with it and sometimes it has involved suffering for Christians but those who love the Lord and have given their heart to him would willingly embrace those suffering is knowing that's a part of our heavenly calling for some other people the suffering may not be persecution but it may just be willing to work hard for God it could be more like you know sometimes you ask your kids to do the dishes and they don't feel in the mood who really feels in the mood for dishes but you know a son would say I would love to do the dishes because they embrace the suffering because of the value of being in family something like that you know as Christians we may not suffer in the sense of what you think you know with someone you know torturing you for Jesus but you may embrace suffering in the form of being willing to work for Christ lay your life down being willing to get up one morning at 6:00 a.m. and attend a prayer meeting once a week you know is that suffering for Jesus well for some of you getting up at 5:45 maybe suffering for Jesus well it's not going to hurt you to do that once a week and if you are at home and you've got a bucket load of kids and you think I can't leave home at 5:45 in the morning with all my kids well take turns with your spouse one of you can go one day one of you can go another day and you can take turns and you know I'm not telling you I'm not obliging you to do that but I'm saying there's many ways you can so-called suffer for Christ and participate in this responsibility we have in God's family to serve our Father and what God really wants is for us to serve Him out of love and out of a heart that cares and I'm sure that some of these slaves that were adopted may not all have had a heart of love at least in the beginning some of them may just have realized this is what I got to do to get what I want in the end but you know in God's kingdom we're striving to love the Lord and we know that the Lord loves us and this isn't this isn't just a calculated kind of commercial decision where God's going to adopt us because he kind of needs something out of it you know God isn't gonna die and he needs someone to carry on the family name it's not like that the what we have in adoption is far more wonderful than anything that was in the Roman Empire but Paul was just using an illustration of something in their life and times to show those believers how wonderful a thing it really was and the fact is it's actually far more wonderful than that but we just need to find a better way of understanding the wonder of it and you know I think the greater love we have for God and serving him the greater the love is that we receive the greater our inheritance actually is so what does this mean for us if you are someone that has the Holy Spirit then you're in God's family you are a son of God he don't belong to your old family anymore as much as you might like to dabble with your old family and maintain ties you actually don't belong to that family anymore and it's in your best interests to cut off the ties with the world and the ways the world does things and the thing the world things the world loves instead you have a responsibility but it also ought to be something from your heart a desire to serve God and give attention to the things that he loves and they will also becomes the things you love you have responsibility to serve your father and love him in heaven as he loves you when I think about this I probably don't have a perfect understanding of this but I think what is God's family I think you know God's family is it's you know it's you know in a broad sense it's God and it's it's being a part of God but it's actually being a part of the congregation here to me this is what it means to be in God's family and in a broader sense when you travel and you in other places or in other churches you know they're God's family as well and a part of those people but to really be in God's family means to be a part of this congregation where God has placed you and to belong there and how do I perceive sonship you know as a son I look at God and he's my father but I also am a son in this family where he's placed me and my serving of God I see it as serving here because God isn't some you know it's like the old thing about tithing you don't just throw your money in the air and if God wants it he can keep it you know you give your money in the church where you attend because giving to the church is giving to God do you see how that works God has placed you in a practical situation where when you're a part of that that is being a part of God and as far as serving God it's in the local church that you serve God you love your fellow brothers and sisters you serve by participating in the things the church does like the prayer meetings and if there's missions and trips and you participate in those you make the things that the church is doing a part of your prayer and so you find that that's where you find your responsibilities in God is in a part of this family that God has placed you and in doing in doing so you're a part of the vine you know Jesus said I am the vine and you other branches well it's not some kind of vague thing of just being connected to God somehow spiritually in the sky know you're connected in the church that's the vine we are the branches and we're connecting in this environment will bear fruit and so you have to be a part of the the life of the church you have to love your brothers and sisters you have to serve the spiritual father that's God has given you in the church but in doing all of that you serve God who is your spiritual father he's your father in heaven and the Holy Spirit who testifies to you that you are his children will change you and if you go back to Roman's and read all the verses before what we read but Romans 8 verses wonderful in it talks about that what the life of a person is like he's controlled by the Holy Spirit and you'll find that that's what the Holy Spirit does for people who are sons of God he changes them many years ago we in the church we had a family the likings now some of you do anyone remember the likings was Luis and June and there were two kids Chris and Margaret I think I remember there's a what long time ago and Chris was a great piano player and Margaret was a great violin player and they were often in the worship team and I remembered one day and one day there was an announcement made somehow that Chris and Margaret were actually adopted I was completely shocked I had just in my mind just there was no concept that they could ever have been adopted because they were exactly like their parents Chris even looked like his dad Margaret looked like a mum they had the mannerisms of their family like they were just you never if no one told you you never would have known they were not biologically connected and you know what I think that's an illustration to us of what happens when we become a part of God's family the Holy Spirit dwells in us and works on us and you allow him to your finds that you will become like God people will look at you and see Christ you will get to the point where people won't see the you so much but they'll be seeing the God that's in you that's what we strive for isn't it and you know when Julius Caesar adopted Octavius what he was wanting was the continuation of something he started and when God adopts us into his family he wants us to be like him so that we can be like Christ on earth he wants us to to be his hands and feet to be his heart here in Rockhampton and wherever else we go so we belong to one another we belong to God we have a father in heaven we should serve Him we should serve one another and we should allow the holy spirit to lead us into being more like him seek all of these things and allow the Lord to change you and give you grace let me pray for you father I ask that you'd help us all to find Lord a place deeper in the heart of God lord I thank you for this great privilege of being adopted into the family of God I thank you that what is yours is ours Lord and I pray that your heart would be in us I pray that we would not be belligerent or stubborn in our service to you or lazy but father I ask for grace to be given for us to have the heart of God in us and for us to serve and care Lord because it's you that we are working for and you that we are serving so lord I pray you'd bless the congregation today and bless the Church of the city may your will be done in our lives and may the kingdom be advanced Lord may we be fruitful people and Lord I pray that we would find that we are like you may the voice of the Holy Spirit be very clear to us in the name of Jesus

Channel: PeaceTV

Views: 755

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Sonship, Peace Australia, Peace Apostolic, adoption, adoption into christ, father, son, david alley, adoption in bible times, roman adoption

Id: NSr0M524pfQ

Length: 38min 16sec (2296 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 19 2019