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Adoption Eph 1:3-6 By Merv Topp

 The need for a place to belong.
That is the heartfelt need of everyone in this room tonight.
There is a need to belong to a family.
There is a need to belong.
As I grew up, my dad by the way was about the same size as I am, and as I grew up we had some cold occasions.
I actually shaped up to my father, that's really about the last I remember of it actually.
All I remember is saying, oh it's come to this has it, and then this, and then I spent a week of telling him I was going to leave home.
It's a full week from Saturday to Saturday.
I remember we lived in Queensland and the house was on high stumps and just I got to set the situation a little bit.
My final Saturday after I'd spent this week of having my port, as it is in Queensland, packed, telling him most of the week at each night that I was leaving.
My dad used to get up at five o'clock every morning whether you or he liked it or not, he just always got up early.
This morning I got up too.
I ground on the same needle in the same record with dad out in the kitchen, this was about six o'clock, telling him that I was going to leave home, that's it I'd had enough.
Well come the second Saturday he picked up my bag at six o'clock, flung open the front door with about ten steps down, threw the bag down ten steps with me after it.
If you leave don't stand around here for a week telling me you're leaving home, go was his invitation.
And so I went.
I went as far north as Townsville.
As I'd done the full loop away from home, a bit like the Prodigal Son, I'd made my way back as far as Gladstone and then I got a truck ride into Brisbane.
I was at Petrie and I had enough money left to make a phone call to the neighbours.
Guess who came and got me?
My father.
He drove all the way across Brisbane to Petrie.
I could have went to my uncle's which was a street a couple of blocks away but he was
a bit taller than dad, a bit the same size and would have done the same thing actually.
But dad come and got us.
We drove all the way back across Brisbane again after, this was after nine months had
passed and I'd been away.
And we never once mentioned the wrong things.
It is good to have you home again son.
It was the only words he said.
And so it is for you and for me.
Each of us need a place to belong.
And God has given us that place.
He in his great grace and mercy, in his sovereignty, purpose, salvation for you and for me, purchased
it upon Calvary's cross with the work of his own dear son, paid for the price of your sins
and for mine and brought us all the way home and adopted us as his children and give us
a place to belong.
Do you realise that, dear child of God?
You see I want about everything else in my ministry here to give you the pure milk of
the word.
You were once not a people but now you are a people.
You are a people of God.
On the spiritual plane the problem is that man has been alienated and separated from
God by reason of wicked works, by reason of sin.
By reason of the result of the fall, by the reason of our own debilitating sinfulness.
There is nothing that we can bring.
We're born in sin and shapen in iniquity.
Saint Augustine once said this, once wrote this,
Thou hast formed us for thyself.
That is our true place.
And then he added later on with frank recognition of our dilemma of sin and our hearts are restless
till they find their rest in thee.
I hope hearts are restless like the nine months I spent away from home.
It's restless.
You see there's not one of us here that doesn't want somewhere to belong.
We want to belong in a home, a spiritual home so that we can grow.
When I went into the mission house I opened one of the cupboards and it was interesting.
There was four names written up on the wall.
The previous secretary had four children with little marks on the wall.
It's probably somewhere in your house where, you know, age five he was this tall.
Age six he was this tall.
Our hearts were restless until we found that peace, that joy of belonging to him
for his purchases at a tremendous price.
And God has dealt with this great problem of alienation and separation through adoption,
through the work of Christ.
Look what it says here, look at verse five.
Having predestined us to adoption.
God and his purposes and his great plan of redemption and great plan of salvation.
Predestined us for adoption as sons by Jesus Christ.
Whom to? To himself.
Sons and daughters of the King.
I want to tell you one thing.
One of the things that the world is suffering from is this great alienation,
the sense of not belonging, the sense of brokenness.
It continues to happen in the life around us and around the world, around Smithfield.
People are going to come from alienated families, brokenness of families,
broken marriages and broken homes, broken relationships.
They will be reckless.
They will be looking for a place to belong
and the greatest place in God's economy and God's earth should be within the church
that is a family that gives them a sense of being brought into that family
as sons and daughters of the King.
Do you understand it dear child of God?
Should we grapple with this?
This is indeed theology on one hand but not let's start being a theology
but look at the great truth of the privilege we've been brought into.
This is place and privilege.
Once you were not a child of God but now you're a child of God.
Once you were alienated, a reason of our sinful nature.
We were destined to a lost eternity, separated from God, the reason of our sin
but God moved.
He purposed an eternity past, locked up in His great person Himself.
People ask, well I don't understand predestination.
Neither do I but I believe in it because the Bible says so.
God has had a plan from eternity past to bring us into this family.
This family.
It is great work.
He's taken us from a family which really was not a family indeed at all.
It was a kingdom of darkness.
That's no family.
He's taken us from a family.
You see sociology teaches us that we like, we need relationships.
One of the most powerful relationships that are around is the bokeh gangs.
They want a sense of belonging but they're all rebels.
But they find great comfort and strength in being rebels in likeness.
So whether it's the Banditos or the Hells Angels or whatever it might be, they take great strength in this.
There's a camaraderie even, there used to be a camaraderie amongst truck drivers.
There used to be a camaraderie, a sense of belonging to that fraternal of truck drivers.
Human nature would long to belong somewhere to something.
But through this great work of adoption God has taken us from what was once not a family
and put us into the new family, the family of God.
This is what it means.
Adoption then therefore refers to the work of God,
the work of God's grace by which he receives us as his very own children through Christ and in union with him.
That's the work of grace.
That's what it is to be in this family.
The very work of God, that sense of belonging,
the sense of that pure spiritual being belonging to a family.
You see for that family to function those things that we talked about this morning,
those five things of envy, bitter, jealous and strife and hypocrisy,
it's got to be washed with the blood of Christ, removed,
owned as sin in our hearts.
So we do this.
We do it with one another.
I'm guilty, you're guilty.
We're all guilty of this.
One of my harder lessons at preparing for this morning is I looked into my own heart
but then we looked what God has done in his mercy.
He's received us as his very own child.
You see, looking at the Roman law and Roman adoption,
what it really means is that when a person in Rome was adopted into a family in Rome or in the Roman Empire,
he had all the rights and all the privileges to the son or a daughter.
All the privileges belong to that adopted person.
So it is for us.
We are going to be joint heirs with him in eternity.
That is yet to come but the privilege that we've been brought in,
we've been brought into this great family of God,
this new relationship we've been brought into,
we want to preserve that at every cost,
particularly when we recall when we were in our sins.
You know, the most difficult time in my life is after I come back to the Lord.
I had a friendship of maternal mates we're friends with
and my longest friend, I witnessed to him for 26 years
and I knew him for 35, 36 years.
I conducted his funeral in between when I was senior the first time and I laughed
and being here the second time.
I had mates with him for years but I was still that fraternal.
I met all the truckies, got together at this local pub and I'd conducted the funeral
and I remembered the sense of that fraternalness of belonging.
But you see, we need to know something of what it is to belong as sons and daughters.
We need to know what it is to be family.
There was a lonely time that I went through
because it seemed as though I didn't fit in the church that I was in.
You know, we need to talk about this.
You know, if a new person comes to Christ and he comes into this church,
you make that person feel part of the family.
He's your brother or his sister.
He shares all the privileges that you share.
He has all the rights that you've got.
You haven't got any extra rights over him if you've come here for 50 years or whatever length of time you've come here.
You've got no more privileges than he has or she has
but she needs to be made known that she's part or he is part of that family of God.
And that's one of the things that we're not real strong on sometimes,
being, understanding what it is to be family.
Or we can give all the religious expressions of it.
I'm talking about the practical, the working out of our Christian faith
and a life where the rubber meets the road.
See, this adoption speaks of the most powerful magnitude of God's mercy.
We belong.
Once we are not a children of God, once we're not a family
but now we are.
We're sons and daughters of the King.
I think Billy Bray, the old Cornwall coal miner back in the 17th century
caught the whole idea a lot better than what we catch of it today.
He used to come into the church leaping and singing and praising God.
He used to take that psalm of David Littrell.
He'd leap and praise God.
He was the King's son.
God had redeemed him, had reason to praise the Lord.
He was alcoholic and he was a blasphemer, a cursor of God.
But when God transformed his life, it said of him that if they nailed him up in a beer barrel
he'd shout Hallelujah and praise the Lord through the bun hole.
You see, he now realized that he was the King's son.
That's what it means.
The magnitude of God's mercy that he's brought you,
you and I to a place of great privilege into the house of God.
That we should be pardoned, forgiven for the sin of wandering.
That we were pardoned rebels, that we should become God's own very dear sons and daughters.
That's the privilege you and I have been brought into.
He's adopted us.
According to the good pleasures of his will, he's brought us into the banqueting house.
He's spread out the table.
He's invited us in.
He's invited us to sit at the table with him.
And a little bit of typology, you know.
A February show that was the same way.
He had the privilege of sitting at the King's table.
You know what the mischievous problem was?
He was lame in both his feet.
You know what our problem is?
You and I have been lame too in both our feet.
We're sinners.
But the privilege to sit at the King's table, restored, forgiven, made whole.
One of our sons and daughters in the weight of glory.
That's what we've been brought into.
We've been installed, instated within the intimacy of his own family circle.
And this is surely wonders beyond wonders that we become sons and daughters.
We've been adopted.
This new relationship to God and a new relationship to other people within the household of faith,
that's what we've been brought into.
That's the message of the Gospel.
He's taken us from darkness, the kingdom of darkness, into the kingdom of his own dear son.
He's made us the son and daughter of the King.
Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
He's brought us into the family.
You know, I hadn't long come back to the Lord.
When I met Elizabeth, it was all sort of tied in together.
And Elizabeth's dad was a...
We had many a conversation.
I can always remember him.
We'd go home for Sunday lunch.
I can remember Elizabeth standing at the dining room door sometimes.
We were supposed to be going up to, you know, part of our courting time.
But we'd get a big dialogue over the book.
I can still see Dad there going,
Well, you've got to read. It's in the book. You've got to read the book.
It's in the book.
You know, Fred Hazelden, Frederick Abraham, I Hazelden is his full name,
accepted us into the family without any questions.
He said, If it's the work of God, it's the work of God.
Never explained what happened in the past.
Brought into a family.
Now, it's a bit hard.
We used to get together every Christmas and I never had a Christmas one year into the other.
It's a bit hard to get used to family things when you're not used to all that sort of thing.
And I had a fair bit of justice to do.
I had no brothers that were Christian, no brothers and sisters.
My family always got together every Christmas. That's where Elizabeth is now.
This is the first one I've missed in 25 years or 24 years or something.
Part of a family.
It's the circle that we've been brought into.
A new relationship to the household of faith.
New relationship to God.
It didn't come automatically.
We have been justified. God justified us.
On the principle of His grace and His mercy, God could still have given us life
at a much inferior level, at a much less status or privilege.
But He didn't.
He brought us right into the family circle.
He sealed the truth of this in our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit,
whereby you and I can try it also.
Abba, Father, we adore you.
That's the privilege that you are, I've been brought into.
But we can call Him Father.
The Lord's instruction in prayer, how to speak to the eternal God,
the creator of the ends of the universe.
He says, pray like this.
Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
See, He brings us to the disciples.
This is the relationships that we have.
This is not a game of pretense.
This is what God has done. It's a new relationship.
As it is written, as eye has not seen nor ear heard,
not that we have entered into the heart of man,
but the things which God has prepared to those who love Him.
What was the hymn for them?
That love that has brought us into that family.
What a privilege.
What grace.
This is the great God that's created all things,
created this spoke by the word of His power.
This universe was brought into being.
He sustains our lives moment by moment.
For indeed Acts tells us, Paul says in Acts 17, 28,
in Him we live and move and have our being.
And there is a sense that He is the God and Father of all creation.
And He in general, He's the Father of all.
But to us, as sons and daughters, He's our Heavenly Father.
How does this affect your prayer?
God is not a God who's remote like Allah of His land.
He's not of many gods and He's not a God that's wound up the universe
and threw us out here and let us tick.
He's a God that has brought us into a place of belonging
where you and I can come to Him and speak to our Heavenly Father.
Consider the lilies of the field.
The ravens.
Can you imagine this?
God was even concerned about the raven and what it would eat.
How much more is He concerned about those that belong to Him,
His children, that He's brought into the family circle?
The Christian has this new relationship to God resulting in his adoption,
with all the privileges of that adoption.
We have a new relationship with one another which requires us to love each other
and work together for the benefits of our brothers and sisters in Christ.
You see, as we start to open up and look at this whole business,
I have a brother too.
He's just like my size and build but without hair.
That's the only difference I'd explain to people, he's got lost all his hair.
And we had our tangles at different times as well.
He got angry with me once and had a brand new probe
and he cut it right at the centre there.
I could have put buttons on it, I'd have been right.
I had a fight with him once, he put his teeth through his tongue.
I feel closer to my brother now than I ever felt.
I pray for my brother every night that the Lord would touch his life and change it.
I plead with God before the throne of grace
and Jim's eyes would be opened with a wonderful gospel.
He's never condemned us, nor has he hindered us.
I love him dearly and I've worked for his good.
And so it should be in the family of God.
And how are we considering one another, provoking one another?
It doesn't mean making one another angry either by the way, you know.
To good works, to faith and love.
For this you know that you're mighty soldiers.
Of course you have love one for another.
I'm talking about genuine love, genuine concern, genuine burden.
Share one another's burdens.
In this you fulfil, what, the law of Christ.
And this is at one point where I like the Good News Bible.
Only in that one point.
There's a little diagram there.
A whole heap of stick figures walking along
and each one's got a hand under the bundle of the person in front.
It really tells the story to everyone another's burdens.
As Christ has shared that great burden, the burden of Calvary,
he paid the price and the penalty that you and I might forever go free
and be brought into this burial house, into the family of God.
So we're brought into a family of God.
Ephesians 2 and 19.
Look at it.
Now therefore you're no longer strangers and foreigners
but fellow citizens with the saints and the members of the household of God.
Fellow citizens.
Those of you that have become citizens in Australia, in your citizenship,
what did you get?
You got the full citizenship rights of Australian citizens, didn't you?
You're required to vote, you're required to obey the law of the land, etc, etc, etc, etc.
Right?
And so it is with our citizenship we have full rights, full privileges.
Our Heavenly Father, Daddy, Daddy, as we come from Him.
Oh dear child of God, there comes a time where we need to come back with striking simplicity
as to that glorious relationship that we've been brought into.
And not take it for granted, not take one another for granted.
We've been brought into a family having been built on the foundations of the apostles and prophets
and Jesus Christ Himself, the chief cornerstone.
There you are, you build us here, you understand that building cornerstone?
That's that wedge that fits in underneath and stops it all falling apart.
That's the cornerstone as a thing that holds everything else together.
Christ, all His beauty.
All those that are our faith are justified, God, we are safe.
And for the sake of His only Son, Jesus Christ, and makes them partakers of grace,
with the grace of adoption, Ephesians 5, He makes them partakers.
He sees that it comes to pass.
Having been predestined, He adopted as the sons of Jesus Christ Himself,
according to His good pleasure, God's purpose and will for us.
So we're not left out there, not wandering as it were, separated.
Then we move on to the next point with being in family.
We have family privileges.
Our new relationship gives us new privileges.
Some we have now and some later in the life that we enjoy in heaven.
Some we have now, the joy of belonging to Christ, some we all enjoy in heaven.
It's a bit like getting your cake and eating it as well, isn't it?
But that's the privilege we have.
The privilege described in Scripture here, we have an inheritance,
incorruptible, undefiled that fades not away.
This is the assurance, that's the joy that we know now.
This is not some pie in the sky in the nearby and by.
This is founded in the Word of God and it's founded in the revelation of God.
It's founded upon God's Word to you and to me.
The eye is Ephesians 1 and 18.
The eye is of your understanding, being enlightened,
that you may know what is the hope of His calling.
Know what the hope of His calling is.
And what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.
You don't get an inheritance if you don't look part of a family,
you've got nothing to be an inheritance, have you?
Here we have an inheritance.
Colossians 3, 24 says,
Knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance
for your service in the Lord Jesus Christ.
This reward for faithful service.
Hebrews 9, 15 says,
And those who have been called may receive the promise of the internal inheritance.
See now, focus now, this is the privileges.
1 Peter 1, 3 to 4 says,
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope.
Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance,
incorruptible, undefiled, but does not fade away,
reserved in heaven for you.
Oh dear child of God,
we know the flow with praise and gratitude of all that God has done.
Ephesians 4, 1 and 4 it says,
And the Holy Spirit is the guarantee.
He is the one.
My grandfather used to always, used to be fascinated as a young fella,
he'd make up a letter up, and I remember he used to make the letters up to the dairy industry.
He had his own little thing of wax,
melted, and every little seal he'd put over it, bang it on.
Brought with him from Germany.
This present guarantee, it's sealed with the sealing of the Spirit of God.
What are some of the privileges, dear child of God,
we've already been hinting all the way through?
Prayer is the key privilege of adoption which we enjoy now.
Prayer, yes, prayer is the key privilege
that you and I, no matter what the circumstances that we're in,
can go to our daddy who's in heaven
and pour in our hearts before him in prayer
for every area of our lives and worship and adoration.
Adoption then implies that this great privilege
and the consequences on one hand of this discouraged is our justification.
God has cleared us in the courts of heaven.
That's a thing that is a privilege for the future as well as now.
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is a peace, dear child of God, that passes understanding.
It cannot be measured when we rest in the privileges
of all that we've been brought into.
This is the work of God's great grace and mercy.
So then, this adoption we've been talking about.
It implies that the Christian life is firstly a life with God as his Father.
We haven't got a spirit of bondage again of fear,
but we have received a spirit of adoption whereby we cry,
Abba, Father, says Romans 8.15.
No bondage of fear.
The bondage of fear has been lifted.
The greatest bondage of fear is the penalty of judgment upon us,
our corruptness, our sinfulness, and that's been lifted.
We've been set free.
No spirit of fear.
We've been liberated.
We've been liberated.
I'll never forget when I was only a young lad and the war was over in 45
and no cream, 37 chef coupe, you know,
sort of duck back sort of thing with tea doors on it.
The bloke pulled up at the farm gate and he's standing out and he's thinking,
it's over, it's over, it's over.
What was over?
The war between Allies and Japan was over.
We've been freed.
I want to tell you of a greater victory, a greater war.
We've been liberated by the power of the finished work of Christ.
Galatians 4, 6 says he redeemed those who were under the law
that we might receive the adoption of sons and daughters.
This very word which Jesus used in his prayer was simply daddy, abba.
It's Aramaic.
And when you translate it from Aramaic into English, it just comes out daddy.
That's the privilege.
Do you get that concept?
We can go to our father.
It means that the life of adoption teaches us
that our fellow Christians as brothers and sisters of Christ
are part of the family of God.
Dear child of God, I think we've got to hang on to more of this as the days go by
as the falseness gets out there
and there's so much falseness going on.
I'm listening today to Brother Ross.
We're talking about a situation where there's pretense.
There's a pretense joy. There's a pretense happiness.
But this is reality.
This is not pretense.
Adoption means life with Christ as the elder brother.
You see, this is what it means that we received all the legal status
of the older son in Roman law,
sons and daughters of the king.
He gives us full status in the family of God.
He leads many sons and daughters to glory.
This is a privilege you and I have been brought into.
Adoption expresses the certainty of our hope, our hope.
Because we've been adopted, because we're a child of God, we have a hope.
He's God to prepare a place for us, to have a hope of a home in heaven.
Where He is, we also will be.
He's going to come back for us.
There's going to come a time when the time shall cease.
We're heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.
In His free grace, this is a privilege.
The Father has given us the right to share in His coming glory in Christ.
What a day that will be.
Look at all the scales, the final link, as it were here, is removed.
And we shall be like Him, we shall be with Him and where He is.
It gives us the assurance that we can stand before God
when we approach Him as God, as our Father,
being taught and led to do so by God the Spirit.
And we know that we stand in a secure relationship.
Oh, let us wave this over.
We stand as secure.
God is our Father.
You know, He will help us in the days of our infancy.
This is our days of infancy.
He will teach us to walk spiritually, to pick us up when we fall down.
As the 11 sisters, I taught E-frame to walk, taking them by their arms,
but they did not know that I healed them.
I drew them with gentle cords, with the bands of love.
And now unto Him who is able to keep us from falling and present us faultless
before the throne of grace without blemish,
before His presence, with glory, with exceeding joy.
This is the hope we have.
This is the assurance.
God is our Father, and He will care for us through the days of His life.
He will bless us abundantly.
God is our Father.
He will go with us before us and show us the way through life.
He knows the way.
We may not always see the way clear,
but He knows the way.
We have assurance that He's going to lead us by the hand.
Ephesians 5 and 1 says, Therefore be imitators of God, dear children.
And there will come a day when we shall know we belong to Him forever.
We shall know that while we are being led and taught
and educated in this life past,
nothing shall interfere with God's purposes for us in Christ.
His kind providence, nothing that has happened to us,
has happened by blind faith that He goes before us.
Then we come to time and we shall look back in the purposes of God in retrospect
and we'll be able to say all the way,
My Saviour lead thee, who have I to fear?
He on earth has been my guide.
We shall look forward to a time also that we shall be like Him.
Oh, dear child of God, is He your heavenly Father?
Oh, it is tonight that we've given food for the soul.
But we should go on marching in design in the beautiful city of God.