Calvary Road Baptist Church
“THE SIGNS OF ADOPTION INTO THE FAMILY OF GOD”
Western culture has become dislodged from reality. We live in an era in which some people embrace the absurdity that a biological male can be a female, and a biological female can be a male because such individuals believe there is no necessary correlation between gender and biological sex.
For the record, “The concept of gender, in the modern sense, is a recent invention in human history. The ancient world had no basis for understanding gender as it has been understood in the humanities and social sciences for the past few decades. The term gender had been associated with grammar for most of history and only started to move towards it being a malleable cultural construct in the 1950s and 1960s.”[1]
Closely associated with the disconnection of the word gender from grammar (male, female, and neuter nouns, etc.) to using the grammatical term in place of one’s biological sex is the age-old descent of our culture into the moral cesspool (where only self is loved) described by the Apostle Paul in Romans 1.24-27 and First Corinthians 6.9-11.
We have now reached the place where it is commonly accepted that sexual perversion is justified by those who claim they were born into the wrong body or identify as different from their chromosomal identity. Of course, this is the illogical but predictable consequence of wickedly changing the truth of God into a lie and not retaining God in their knowledge.[2]
One of the developments about 175 years ago was an approach to reality divorced from the Bible and common sense. First, Karl Marx denied that Logic is universally valid for all mankind for all ages.[3] Second, Marx posited that since the rich obtain their wealth by stealing from the poor, stealing from those who stole is appropriate. Third, he declared that the outcome of civilization’s destruction is irrelevant. In effect, one must ignore any consideration of the effects resulting from causation.[4] That is why contemporary socialists are irrational, unopposed to thievery, and blind to cause and effect.
At this point, the Christian might think that the Marxian approach to thinking ridiculous is not only a complete repudiation of what the Bible teaches. To be sure. As to Marx’s first assertion, about logic, in Isaiah 1.18, we read the words of God: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD.” As to Marx’s second postulate about stealing from the rich, Exodus asserts property rights in 20.15, where it is stated, “Thou shalt not steal.” And his third point, about not concerning yourself with the future and the consequences of your behavior?
Consider these books of the Bible. It is variously estimated that more than 25% of the Bible was predictive prophecy when written. Fourteen percent of Genesis, forty percent of Exodus, fifty-nine percent of Leviticus, and ten percent of the Psalms were predictive prophecy when they were written![1] Yet we are not to concern ourselves with future outcomes?
The modern onslaught against the trustworthiness of God’s Word has taken place in the public intellectual arena for a considerable time. However, do not place the blame in the human realm on the well-known supposed atheists. The thinking that has brought us to this inevitable point began in the ranks of the professing Christians!
Let me explain. I have found almost thirty passages in God’s Word that illustrate the principle of two or three witnesses-to-fact being required to establish someone’s guilt of wrongdoing, whether it be someone accused of a crime in the Old Testament or a Church member being dealt with about an offense.[5]
Not only did the Savior direct congregations to adhere to this principle when dealing with sins by members within congregations, but Gospel ministers once upon a time adhered to the principle when ministering God’s Word to the lost and to those hopefully converted.
Before 1800, most Gospel ministers dealt with the lost to bring them to Christ and with hopeful converts as a buttress against sincere but false professions of faith in Christ. A wonderful proof describing this pastoral practice is a book written by Solomon Stoddard, a New England pastor of sterling reputation and the grandfather of Jonathan Edwards. Titled A Guide To Christ, the book was written to help Gospel ministers whose training in such matters had been neglected by their own pastors, and to mitigate false hopes among those who made professions of faith in Christ that were not the result of genuine conversions.
Then there was Charles G. Finney, one of the men I exposed in my book, Suffer The Children (The tragic legacies of Finney & Bushnell). Finney so distorted standard evangelistic practices in the 19th century that the default setting in American Christianity morphed into automatically accepting as accurate every profession of faith, abandoning the well-founded principle of two or three witnesses, and ignoring what the Savior said and the Bible shows about false hopes.[6]
Let me recap. During Solomon Stoddard’s time, Gospel ministers were very personal and careful with sinners and hopeful converts, adhering to the two or three witnesses principle in bringing sinners to Christ and confirming those who were hopefully converted as believers. Finney arrived on the scene and upset that apple cart, the principle of two or three witnesses, as a congregational safeguard and help to hopeful converts being discarded.
The result? There is a twofold result. One consequence is that lost professing Christians began to flood into congregations, posing as, and in some cases thinking they were, real Christians. Of course, this so lowered the bar that more and more false professors of faith remained deluded about their spiritual condition because their lifestyles were so much like everyone else’s, and the fewer and fewer real Christians in congregations were presumed to be super saints.[7]
Another result was the disconnect from what usually occurs when a sinner comes to Christ under a Gospel preacher’s ministry, forming a bond resembling the relationship between a dad and his child.[8] With so many Church members no longer genuinely converted, that relationship between the Gospel minister and the person who came to Christ under his ministry is no longer considered important.
Consequently, the spiritual resistance you might imagine from Christians to the unscriptural nonsense advanced by Karl Marx and Charles Darwin and a host of other infidels was weakened, if not eliminated. Throughout the twentieth century, evangelism became perfunctory, pathetic, and shallow, with an ever-increasing number of people claiming they were Christians, many of them sincerely but wrongly believing they were Christians, and entire congregations becoming fragile shells of what so many had once been.
Assemblies of believers have always risked threats to our physical safety through the centuries, but in Scripture, we are only warned of dangers coming from two directions. On the one hand, we must be careful to maintain our doctrinal integrity by studying God’s Word, seeking to understand God’s Word, and obeying God’s Word. On the other hand, we must maintain our congregation’s spiritual unity, our hὁmothumadόn.[9] The only thing more important to us than our spiritual unity should be our commitment to sound doctrine. It is with a commitment to truth and a reliance on the all-but-neglected concept of two or three witnesses, for the most part abandoned by pastors two centuries ago, that we once more take up the doctrine of adoption by attending to the signs of adoption.
Hearkening back to the days of more careful pastoral practice, consider something. Consider the benefit to you of testing your adoption into God’s family. Why not begin by testing your adoption yourself? Then, if desired, address the matter of your adoption into God’s family with me, as Solomon Stoddard would have done and as Jonathan Edwards would have done with their flock?
We begin.
All of humanity is divided into two ranks, the sons of God, or the heirs of Hell. Our text is, like last time, John 1.12:
“To them he gave power to become the sons of God.”
It is no indication that you are God’s adopted child because you have Christian parents. Most of you understand this. Recall that the Jews of Christ’s day boasted that they were of Abraham’s seed, heirs of the kingdom because they enjoyed that heritage. But adoption does not come by blood.
Many godly parents have wicked sons and daughters. Abraham had Ishmael. Isaac had Esau. No one is God’s child from being born to godly parents. Being God’s child comes only by adoption and grace. Would you dispute that? If not, why not evaluate if you are an adopted son or daughter of God?
I propose that you consider four signs that are associated with adoption into the family of God:
First, THE SIGN OF OBEDIENCE
This is crucial. A son obeys his father. Therefore, when God says “No,” an adopted child says, “My heavenly Father commanded me, and I will obey.” Someone who has tasted that the Lord is gracious believes God’s promises and obeys His commands. And while a child’s obedience is not perfect, it is regular. And that implies five things you should understand:
First, understand that obedience to God results from the right rule. What is the right rule for the child of God’s obedience? It can only be the Word of God. This is because of Proverbs 13.12 and 16.25, which read,
“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
Child-like obedience is that which is in agreement with our Father’s revealed will. If our obedience does not align with the Word of God, it is offering up strange fire, it is will worship, and God will say, “This is not obedience to Me. Where did this idea come from?” Since we are in a spiritual war, and you find yourself engaged in a supernatural conflict, where do you imagine the impulse to do something that does not arise from God’s Word might come from? Could it not be the doctrines of demons you are adhering to, First Timothy 4.1? If you have no directive from God’s Word to warrant your behavior, then your actions cannot possibly be obedience, which leaves only idolatry.
I look forward to seeing you again this evening.
Second, understand that obedience to God results from a right principle. And what is that right principle? Thomas Watson correctly identified the right principle as the noble principle of faith. Paul used the phrase “The obedience of faith” in Romans 16.26, the obedience that arises from faith. A moral person may give God outward obedience, which may seem glorious to the eyes of others. However, if it is an attempt at obedience that is not produced by faith in Christ, it is a work of self-righteousness, and is identified by the prophet Isaiah as “filthy rags,” in Isaiah 64.6.[10] This is best illustrated in Hebrews 11.4, where we read,
“By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.”
Third, understand that obedience to God must seek the right end. What is that right end? Some people seek adoration. Others seek applause. Still others seek atta boys. The proper end of the obedience of the adopted is glorifying God. Revelation 4.11:
“Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”
That which has spoiled a great many apparently spiritual deeds of ministry and service is, that the end has been wrong. Consider the Savior’s comment, in Matthew 6.2:
“Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.”
Some people seem unable to do anything without recognition or gratification in some form, either the recipient of what ought to have been an anonymous gift thanking them or the praise of the pastor as fuel for future good deeds. True obedience looks at God in all things, with the goal that “Christ shall be magnified” Philippians 1.20. Do we frequently fall short of the mark? Oh, my, yes. But we take the right aim. Sadly, too many are like Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, the man of God. Gehazi ran after the Syrian general Naaman for a reward because his service to God seemed insufficient to him.[11]
Fourth, understand that obedience to God must be uniform. Every command of God has the same stamp of divine authority on it. And if I obey one directive coming to me from God through His Word, I by rights ought to obey them all. Psalm 119.6 reads,
“Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all thy commandments.”
To obey God in some things and not in others is a challenge we must deal with. We do not want to be like Esau, who obeyed his father in bringing him venison, but not in a more important matter, the choice of who to marry.[12] Proper obedience has a desire towards every command of God, as the compass always points to the magnetic North. The question, of course, is, who can obey God in every way? Listen to Puritan Thomas Watson’s answer to that query:
“Though an adopted heir of heaven cannot obey every precept perfectly, yet he does evangelically. He approves of every command. ‘I consent to the law, that it is good.’ Rom. 7.16. He delights in every command. ‘O how love I thy law!’ Psalm 119.97. His desire is to obey every command. ‘O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes!’ Psalm 119.5. Wherein he comes short, he looks up to Christ’s blood to supply his defects. This is evangelical obedience; which, though it be not to satisfaction, it is to acceptation.”[13]
Watson, reflecting most Puritans’ thinking on this matter, was of the opinion that God graciously accepts the adopted child’s desire to do the deed as the deed done, though we fall short in practice this side of eternity.
Fifth, understand that obedience to God is ever more constant. Psalm 106.3 declares,
“Blessed is he that doeth righteousness at all times.”
Child-like obedience does not run hot and cold and then quit. Our diligence to obey God as His adopted children ought to be like the fire on the brazen altar in Leviticus 6.13,
“The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out.”
That said, Second Peter 1.5-8 shows us that sanctification, our growth as believers, is progressive, with our virtues as the saints of God being hard-earned by God’s grace and mercy and gradually incorporated into our practice and then into our habit, and then into our character over time.
ALONG WITH THE SIGN OF OBEDIENCE IS SEEN THE SIGN OF LOVING TO BE IN OUR FATHER’S PRESENCE
The second sign of adoption into the family of God is loving to be in our Father’s presence. Although this might not seem so apparent to Americans who have been exposed to a century of political propaganda designed to destroy the family unit, a century of degrading and debilitating males so they will not function well as men and fathers, and creating the impression that fatherhood is an obsolete and unnecessary appendage from outmoded times, the child who loves his father is never so well as when he is near him.
Are you God’s child? Then you love the presence of God in His ordinances. What is meant by that? You are thrilled with the one-time experience of believer baptism. And, even if the remembrance of your baptism is that you did not know nearly as much about the meaning of baptism as you now wish, you have come to appreciate the memory of your public identification with Christ. You delight in the baptism of other believers. You know that, over time, their appreciation of their own and others’ baptisms will only deepen. Added to that one-time experience are the repeated blessings of your Church’s communion of the Lord’s Supper. How thrilling it is to the Church member that we have been given an ordinance to celebrate repeatedly, which in the present reminds us of what our Savior did in the past for us until He comes again. The two elements representing His body and His blood offered for us. So important is the communion of the Lord’s Supper that it is the one privilege denied to a Church member who is put outside the body for cause, showing that someone with a proper appreciation of the Lord’s Supper will be highly motivated to repent and be restored to enjoy the communion once more.
Then there is prayer when we speak to God, and the preaching of His Word when He speaks to us. How does every child of God delight to hear his Father’s voice! I believe attending to the preaching of the Word of God is the most important of human activities since every other thing a person does to become a Christian, and every subsequent thing one does to become a better Christian, springs from the preaching of God’s Word. Psalm 63.1-2:
1 O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;
2 To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.
When we gather for preaching and prayer, we are wonderfully blessed, in addition to being obedient.
Those who disregard these means of grace are likely not God’s children because they do not care to be in God’s presence.
Third, THERE IS THE SIGN OF ADOPTION THAT IS THE GUIDANCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD
Romans 8.14 reads,
“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”
It is not enough for the child to have life, but the child must also be led step by step. John informs us in John 1.12 that the adopted child must be born of God, with Paul adding to that the leadership of the Spirit of God.
God used the pillar of fire to lead the Israelites in the wilderness. In like manner, God’s adopted children are led by the indwelling Spirit. We need God’s Spirit to lead us since we are so apt to go wrong.
There is a part of us that is still inclined to sin. Our understanding and conscience are given to guide our will, but our will is often self-will and rebels. Therefore, God’s children need the Spirit to check our corruption and lead us in the right way.
As the evil spirit leads wicked men - the spirit of Satan led Herod Antipas to incest, led Ahab to murder, and led Judas to betray Christ, so the Holy Spirit leads God’s children to obedience.
Granted, there are some who only pretend to be led by the Spirit, justifying every whim and fancy as being God’s leadership in their lives. But the Spirit’s guidance is always agreeable to the Word of God. The charlatans and fakes leave off God’s Word, while God’s adopted children tend to resort to the Word and comply with the Word. We know that “Thy Word is truth,” John 17.17. We also know that the Spirit guides “into all truth,” John 16.13. The Word of God’s teaching and the Spirit of God’s leading agree together.
Finally, THERE IS THE SIGN OF ADOPTION THAT IS THE LOVE OF GOD’S CHILDREN FOR GOD’S CHILDREN
We spoke of God, and now we speak of God’s people. Can you prefer the Devil’s people to God’s people and call yourself a Christian? First Peter 2.17 reads,
“Love the brotherhood.”
The Greek verb translated love is an imperative verb, meaning it is a directive. And so much of the time it is an easy command to obey. But not just easy. Love for one another is also effective. Remember what the Savior said about our love for one another in John 13.35?
“By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
We love our brothers and sisters in Christ, God’s children with us, though they (which is to say we) have some infirmities. There are always blemishes in the lives of God’s children. We have not yet attained, as Paul reminds us in Philippians 3.12. But we still love.
So, what do we do? How is this accomplished? Love covers a multitude of sins, First Peter 4.8. And how does this work out? We love the beautiful face of holiness, even if it has a scar. If adopted, we love the good we see in God’s children. We admire their graces that we sometimes have to look for to notice intentionally. But we do that so they will do it with us. And we pass by their imprudencies. If we cannot love them because they have some failings, how do we think God can love us with our failings? Can we plead for an exemption? And how do we suppose they love us?
Evangelism is messy. I mention it again and again, but I am not sure we understand the implications of reality, which limits our effectiveness as God’s children. Therefore, please turn to Second Peter 1.3-9:
3 According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:
4 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
5 And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;
6 And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;
7 And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.
8 For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9 But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.
Verse 3 informs us that we already have what we need for life and godliness. No excuses, Christian. Verse 4 reminds us that we are given great and precious promises, suggesting that we not only look to the future in anticipation of what God has in store for us but what God has promised for those we interact with as brothers and sisters in Christ. Verses 5-7 show we are works in progress, you, me, and others in the family of God. Please note how late in each of our lives godliness, kindness, and charity become predominant. Verses 8-9 remind us, among other things, that we can forget that we were purged from our old sins. Is that something you have forgotten?
I ask because a preacher friend recently told me on a phone call that he went back to a Church he pastored many years ago, with the now older congregation having wholly forgotten their drug-abusing past, their out-of-wedlock pregnancies past, their lying and thieving past, and they had become quite unwilling to tolerate in their congregation believers who were not yet as refined as they have become. He wondered about their spiritual condition because they seemed to have no apparent love or tolerance for their profoundly baby brothers and sisters in Christ.
Christians should love Christians, even newborns, loud and needing their diapers changed, who need time to grow.
By these signs, we know our adoption.
If there is uncertainty, because sometimes children do not feel like they are family members, I am available to speak to you at a convenient time and place.
__________
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender
[2] Romans 1.25, 28
[3] Known as a cofounder of communism and allegedly an atheist, Karl Marx was actually a Satanist according to Richard Wurmbrand, Was Karl Marx A Satanist? (Diane Books Publishing Co., 1978).
[4] Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., Second Edition, 1981), page 6.
[5] Numbers 35.30; Deuteronomy 17.6-7; Joshua 24.22; Ruth 4.9-11; Job 10.17; Isaiah 8.2; 43.9-12; 44.8-9; Jeremiah 32.10, 12, 25, 44; Matthew 18.15-20; Luke 24.46-48; John 5.31; Acts 1.8; 2.32; 3.15; 5.32; 10.39-40; 13.31; 2 Corinthians 13.1; 1 Thessalonians 2.10; 1 Timothy 5.19; 6.12; Hebrews 10.28; 1 John 4.1; 5.7-9; Revelation 1.1; 2.2
[6] Matthew 7.22; Acts 8.9-24; 19.1-7
[7] This led to C. I. Scofield’s invention of carnal Christianity, his attempt to explain the influx of unsaved church members.
[8] 1 Corinthians 4.15
[9] Acts 1.14; 2.1, 46; 4.24; 5.12; 8.6; 15.25; Romans 15.6
[10] 64:5 “And like a garment (of ) polluted (menstruation)” in John Joseph Owens, Analytical Key to the Old Testament, Volume 4, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1989), page 194.
[11] 2 Kings 5.20-27
[12] Genesis 26.34; 27.5
[13] Thomas Watson, A Body Of Divinity Contained In Sermons Upon The Westminster Assembly’s Catechism, (London: The Banner of Truth Trust, Revised 1890), 165.
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