So the topic this evening for this Saturday evening session of the Highland Theological College teaching weekend in Stornoway is Living as God's Adopted Son. We could put a plural, Living as God's Adopted Sons and we don't need to feel as though we're excluding anyone who's female here. because embedded in one of the readings we've taken tonight, it said if anyone is baptised into Christ, they have closed themselves with Christ, so there's no longer slave nor free, no longer Jew nor Gentile, no longer male nor female, all one in Christ. So the divisions that we have about gender, about ethnic divisions for example, about status in society, slave or free, in Christ these things are dissolved because in Christ there is one adopted son who has many members. and we are all together members one of another and therefore members of Christ by virtue of being baptised into Christ. So all of the men here are part of the Son of God. In Christ we are sons, all of the women here are part of the sons of God, the Son of God by adoption. So we can have ourselves understood as sons of God, whether we're male or female, But we can understand ourselves, the whole church throughout all time and space and into eternity is in Jesus, the adopted son. Let Israel go, he is my son. A whole nation is a son and now a multitude that no man can number is a son. And we are many members of the one son, Jesus Christ. The other way that we can understand what Paul's saying here about adoption is this, that our status as sons is linked inseparably and inevitably to what God has done in Jesus Christ. Now, I'll come back to this from another angle a little bit later this evening, but it's very easy for us to think of Jesus Christ as being somehow over there or up there, geospatially we might think he's up there in heaven because he's ascended up into heaven, but then we get a little bit confused when he says, behold I am with you always even to the end of the age. So, he is ascended not to be absent but to be present. But even if we're thinking geospatially, We are not separate from Jesus Christ. Everything that God has granted to us and everything that he ever will grant to us, he's granted to us and will grant to us only in and through Jesus Christ. And morally, spiritually, we can think of Jesus Christ right up here at a level that we could never know or perhaps never attain to. But when we read the Apostle Paul, he says actually you are all in Jesus Christ. You are members of Christ. You are one with Christ. So geospatially or morally spiritually, there is actually no room in the New Testament for us to think of a time or think of a place of separation between us and Christ. as though somehow or other Jesus is there and we are here and we are still making our way towards him. There is a journey narrative in the scriptures, there is a pilgrimage motif. But if anything, we would have to put it this way, that the journey is one in which Jesus Christ has engaged, He has left His Father's throne, He has come to us, He has gathered the lambs on His shoulders, He has carried us through the cross, through death, through resurrection, and now has taken us up with Himself, so He is the one who has made pilgrimage to us, not we making our pilgrimage to Him. So whenever we're talking about our status as the sons and daughters of God, or you'll just hear me saying the sons of God but all of the women here are included, just like all of the men are part of the Bride of Christ. That makes you feel good doesn't it guys? When we talk about being sons of God, we must never allow ourselves to think of ourselves as that sonship apart from Jesus. It is a sonship bestowed on us, granted to us by grace, and that grace has a name and a face. The grace of God has appeared. His name is Jesus. His face is the face of Jesus. And we have the adoption of sons in and through the man Christ Jesus. You must never think of yourself in any sense apart from Him. But as I said, if the Lord enables us, we'll come back to think of that in a different angle a little later. What I want to do this evening is basically just two things. Firstly, I want to talk about the pattern of adoption that we see in the Old Testament Scriptures and as Paul expounds it in Romans and Galatians. And then secondly, I want us to consider just a few practical outworkings of that Old Testament and New Testament pattern. Each of these things we could spend a long time on. By God's grace you will not fall asleep, by God's grace I will not spend a long time. Some of us have had a meal at George and Isabel's house. The Australians who've eaten at George and Isabel's house have strict instructions that if they fall asleep, they are to fall forward. It's much harder to snore loudly if you're forward than if your head's backwards. Firstly, what is the pattern of adoption that you see in the Scriptures? And Hector has alluded to this already in what he's brought to us this weekend. God's plan and purpose from the very beginning of creation and indeed from before creation is to bless us, his children. When God made Adam and Eve in his own image, his heart was full of blessing for them. He created them, out of sheer love, out of sheer joy, out of the overflowing abundance of his own triune life, God the Father through the Son by the agency of the Holy Spirit brought the whole creation into being and then at the pinnacle of that creation he placed Adam and Eve and as Hector has already alluded to, the very first words that he spoke were words of blessing. God's purpose has always been that we made in his image would live in the blessing, would know the blessing, would be filled with the blessing. It's just what the Father wishes for any of his children. It's what you wish for your children, is it not? But we've also seen that that fatherly heart has been contested. Not from the Father's side, because He has always turned towards us, even if our backs are turned towards Him. But it has been contested from principalities and powers, from satanic rebellion, and from the rebellion of the human heart. And in that contest we have come to hate God our Father. We have constituted ourselves as his enemies and in that place we have come under spiritual slavery. That slavery was represented and experienced by Israel in Egypt. So the father who's always been the father, seeking his children, longing to bring them into the fullness of the blessing, becomes the redeeming father. Thou art our father, our maker from of old. He is the creator, the redeemer. So the creative father is the redeemer father as he redeems his children from the hand of those who have afflicted them so that they might receive the blessing, so that they might know the fullness of their love and adoption in sonship. That Exodus event stands at the very centre of the whole of the Old Testament story. passage after passage in the Psalms and the Prophets look back to it and it operates as a sort of archetype, as a sort of pattern that says this is the way it's always going to be in this current contested creation, that the Father will always be speaking a word to set his children free and that word will always be contested. Now in one of the earlier places in which we were ministering on this series of weeks that we've been here in Scotland, there was a particularly strong spiritual battle that went on. I said to Hector on one occasion, I've never experienced in just recent days anything so strong that as I was preaching from Romans chapter 8, there was almost an audible voice on my shoulder saying, don't tell them, don't let them know about their justification, don't tell them that they are free, don't let them know that they are sons and daughters of God. It was a voice that was full of hatred and bitterness and accusation and threat and fear and distress. It was a voice which you come to recognise very quickly not the voice of the true father, it's the voice of the father who's come to steal and to kill and destroy. So strong was that at one point that my knees were shaking and knocking and I didn't know if I could go on. But I thought, well I didn't actually think, I thought, no I've got to go on, there's nothing else to say except what the Lord has given us to say. And afterwards in a conversation with Hector I said, why is it so easy to preach law and so hard to preach grace. Hector said, well it's because the same battle is always being raged for the Father's children. The Father is always saying throughout time and every continent and every proclamation of the Gospel, the Father is always saying, let my children go. And Satan, the God of this world, is always saying no. He wants to keep them for himself. He wants the children whom God has formed for his own glory and to enjoy his own presence. He wants them in his own possession as his own captives to be held hostage and he's come only to steal and to kill and destroy, never to bless. And so every time that gospel goes out there is that battle. because the father brings a word of what he's accomplished in his son and that accomplishment in his son is a new exodus. It's a bringing out of the slavery to the God of this world. It's a bringing out of his children from fear. to bringing out of their children from darkness and from the distress that that fear brings into their hearts. And Satan doesn't want any of that to be said and heard because he holds the nation captive. He deceives the nations by blinding their eyes to the true nature of God. He tells them that God is not as he really is. He makes a sort of idolatrous father which is not really a true picture of the father and he fills us with fear and terror because he portrays that father not as he really is but as the harsh judge with the slipper or the cane or the belt ready to kill us as soon as look at us. So there's that great contest, that pattern that you see typified in the Exodus throughout scripture. And so in the New Testament, the Son, the true Son has come, the Elder Brother. And He's come to be the Passover Lamb. He's come to be the new Moses. He's come to lead His people out in a new exodus to which the old exodus pointed. And He's come to lead those children right into the very bosom of the Father, right into the Father's heart. And as He comes, He comes therefore to destroy the works of the devil. and to set his children free from slavery and bring them into the liberty of the glory of being sons of God. So that Exodus pattern is there all the way through the Old Testament, it's taken up in the New Testament, you see it on the mountain of Transfiguration as Moses and Elijah are there discussing with Jesus his Exodus which he's about to accomplish in Jerusalem. God always saying to the God of this age, let my children go. And the God of this age always saying, no, I will not let them go. But of course we know the God of this age does not have it within his power not to let them go. when the word of the Lord comes and when the word of the Lord in particular comes in flesh and blood, he cannot stand against him because he's come as the strong man to deliver those who've been held in Satan's captivity and to disarm Satan, to take away the armour in which he's trusted. And so that Exodus pattern that you see there, that I've just outlined for us, is picked up in a number of places in the scriptures and we've read a couple of them earlier this evening. Romans chapter 8, for you have not received, verse 15, you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, Abba, Father. You notice two things, first of all. Spirit of slavery is linked to fear. The way that the evil one works is to inculcate fear in relationship with God. He works as the accuser of the brethren to tell us all ways of where we have failed, how badly we have failed, how comprehensively we have failed, how holy is God, how impossible is forgiveness, how irremedial is our situation, how dreadful is the sin that we have committed, how unforgivable is our conduct and as the accuser of the brethren, He hedges us about with that voice which is full of fear. Slavery and fear in Paul's theology are two sides of the one thing. Under what are we enslaved? The answer in Paul, in Romans and in Galatians is this, we are enslaved to the law. Now the law is good, the law is holy, the law is righteous, the law is the outshining of God's own nature. There's nothing wrong with the law. But when the law comes and it interacts with human flesh, the law reveals our sin for what it really is and it confirms us in our guilt. And once we have guilt, we have fear. As soon as you have guilt in your heart, as soon as the knowledge of guilt is there, Fear is there. Fear and guilt go together. Because fear, as the Apostle John tells us in 1 John 4 verse 18 or thereabouts, fear relates to punishment. The Apostle John says, perfect love casts out fear. For he who fears is not perfected in love because fear relates to punishment. The way that the broken law works under the hand of Satan in league with the flesh is to say you have failed. God is holy. Your failure is too great for God to forgive. God is going to come to judge you. God is going to come to punish you. God is going to come to destroy you. The only way out of the situation is to do something which will atone for your guilt. Whatever you do to atone for your guilt can never be settled enough to really atone for it. So there's more that you have to do. Your conscience can never be at peace. Your heart can never be at rest. You're always on edge. You're wondering whether you've done enough or you haven't done enough. You're wondering whether God's going to be pleased with you or not. Whether you've done everything that God requires or whether you haven't done everything that God requires. And that situation of slavery linked with fear drives Christians and drives those who are really the sons of God to live as slaves even though they are God's children. To live in a way that does not regard God as their true Abba, but regards him instead as the vengeful judge who is coming to steal and kill and destroy when in fact it's the false god of this age who's coming to steal and kill and destroy. So the Apostle Paul says this, we have been in slavery in that whole system of the law, guilt, the flesh, under the accusation of the devil where he's had us in his hand because of our guilt And now something has happened. You have received the spirit of adoption as sons by which you cry Abba Father. Let me interrupt myself here. I'm very warm up here. Perhaps it's because I'm a bit sort of lifted up in this high pulpit-y thing. How are you? Are you warm? Are you hot? Are you sweaty? Are you falling asleep? Is the evil one snatching the word away from you as you drift off into slumberland? Shall we turn some heating off? Shall we have a window open? Shall we open a door? Shall we ask the evil one not to have any ground so that we can hear? I think last time we opened one of these I got harassed by a waft in the pulpit so we better be careful. Now that pattern transferring us from slavery to sonship is repeated throughout, particularly Paul's letters. The question is, how can that transfer take place? The answer is, it can only take place through a redemption. We cannot transfer ourselves from slavery to sonship. We've worked hard at trying to get out of slavery and it doesn't work. You have to have a redeemer. Now, the Old Testament tells us a lot about the actual need for redemption and the way that redemption operated. You'll remember stories of Ruth and Boaz, for example. But in the Old Testament, when someone was indebted with a debt they could not repay that needed to be redeemed, or if they had sold themselves into slavery and they needed to be redeemed, a redeemer had to come. The enslaved person could not redeem themselves. And that redeemer had to be a kinsman. There had to be four things about that redeemer. Firstly, he had to be a blood relative, a nearest kinsman and part of the tragedy in the parable of the prodigal son is that the elder brother should have acted as the kinsman redeemer for the younger brother, but he didn't. He had no compassion in his heart for his younger brother. He stood aloof, stood away, stood outside. So, there is the first necessity that there is a kinsman redeemer, someone who is a blood relative. The second thing, of course, is that the person who is doing the redeeming, the redeemer, must not be in need of redemption himself. Stands to reason. If you're a slave, you can't be free. So how can a non-free slave redeem another non-free slave? Third thing is that they have to have a redemption price that they could pay. You couldn't redeem someone if you didn't have enough resources to redeem them. The ransom for a soul is costly. Who can repay it? And then finally you had to be willing. Remember there was another one who could have redeemed in the case of Ruth, but he was unwilling. Boaz became the kinsman redeemer. Now if you look at those four things, they're just a beautiful little thumbnail sketch of our Lord Jesus Christ. Seeing the children share in flesh and blood, he also likewise partook of the same. Whereas the elder brother in the parables stood aloof and didn't want to come near to the prodigal, Jesus, our kinsman redeemer, is not ashamed to call us his brothers. He takes flesh and blood. He takes human nature to himself. He's our kinsman. He's one with us. And yes, he's the only man in all history who does not need redemption. because he is the only one who is not under Satan's snare, because he is the only one who has no guilt. He is always eternally the free son of God. And yes, he has a price that he is willing to pay and only he can pay it. From God's side, the incarnate son of God and from man's side, the incarnate son of man. And finally, was he willing? And here sometimes we get a little, perhaps a little lost, because we sometimes imagine that Jesus Christ came grudgingly. It takes a little bit to get into our thinking that Jesus Christ did not come grudgingly. He came willingly, joyfully, fully, with great love. He came with freedom in His heart. He came without a stoical gritting of the teeth. He came with joy to seek and to save the lost and to carry the Lamb's home on His shoulders. So He's willing, He's able. He's our nearest kinsman. He has the price to pay and he is willing to pay it. And so that pattern of the kinsman redeemer who comes to redeem so that we might receive our adoption is picked up very clearly by Paul in Galatians, which is the second reading. Now, in Galatians chapter 3, Paul has spoken a lot about the slavery and the curse that we are under, under the law. That broken law speaks curse to us. We are never justified by the law. It only ever condemns us. And that law, particularly as it's broken and we rest under it in our guilt, rests upon us not as a blessing but a curse. But God's purpose is that the blessing would come to us through Jesus Christ, not the curse. And he's told us in the first part of chapter 3 that there has been a great exchange which has taken place. Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. Jesus Christ bore the curse of the law. He bore the curse of slavery. He became sin on our behalf. He bore the broken law with his commandments and ordinances which was consisting of decrees against us. Then later in chapter 3, Paul speaks about this pattern of adoption. Now we don't have the full details about how this worked, but as best we can work out from what we read in the scriptures and what we're able to find from the ancient way things were done in the Greco-Roman world was this, that particularly a person who had a large estate might entrust their children into the hands of one of their slaves. That slave was a tutor to the children but also here a custodian. The language that Paul uses in the second part of Galatians 3 and into the early part of Galatians 4 indicates this language is slavery. They are shut up, they are trapped, they are under custody. they are enslaved. And what the picture seems to be is this, that God has set a time for that slavery to have its full operation. Now you know how that works in your own experience. Under the slavery of the broken law, under the curse of that law resting on you, under the guilt of that law as you carry the brokenness of that law in your conscience, you experience fear. You experience terror of judgement. You experience the dreadful thought that one day you're going to have to stand before God and God is going to look at you and God is going to weigh you in the balance. And you wonder how you'll get on. and you're not very sure that you'll get on very well. And so you become fearful in your heart and you become defensive in your relationships and you become critical and judgemental and hard and bitter. The deeds of the flesh start to rise up, envy, jealousy, bitterness, slander, all because of the guilt of the broken law and the slavery under which you live. Nothing you can do seems to relieve the situation. Nothing stills your conscience. Nothing brings peace to your heart. Open the Scriptures and every page of Scripture condemns you. You can't seem to find any good news anywhere in the Bible. And He accuses at you, telling you of all the things that you've done and haven't done. He never lets you go. Never says a good word about you. Never gives you a modicum of relief or comfort. Keeps driving you. Slavery. And that's the way it was for these little children. As the estate owner, the father, gave them into the hands of one to rule over them. They had no rest, they had to get up when he said, they had to go to bed when he said, they had to do their lessons when he said, they had to go and work in the fields when he said, they had to do their physical exercises when he said. They experienced life as slaves and that's what Paul means in chapter 4 verse 1. Now I say as long as the heir is a child he does not differ at all from a slave although he's the owner of everything. Hector said today in Stornoway or throughout the world, there are many, many, many countless thousands of people who are the father's children, they just don't know it yet. They are still experiencing life under slavery. They are still living in the bitterness of it, the harshness of it, the yoke of it is crushing them, they are bent over, they are burdened. Many of them are the Lord's people even in the church. So as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave, although he is the owner of everything. But there's a time. We're under guardians and managers until a date set by the father. There's a time. Whether it was 16, whether it was 18, whether it was 21, we don't know. At some point in the experience of that child who lived a life under slavery, the father said, this child is now ready to enter their inheritance. And at a date set by the father, he would grant them the full rights of sonship and so they would no longer be under the slave but they would rule over the slave. They would experience life in the glory of the freedom of their sonship rather than the beggarly nature of the slavery in which they'd lived. And Paul takes that pattern And he says this gives us a wonderful picture of what Jesus Christ has done and what God has done in Jesus Christ. The time set by the Father has come. Jesus has come. The Son has come. The time for slavery is ended. The Son, the one who does not need any redemption, has come to act as our Redeemer. When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son. He was a kinsman redeemer, born of a woman. He was born under the law so that He experienced the conditions of what it was to live under that law and He lived under that law to the end until He became the curse for us in His body on the tree. But that was this so that this might happen. so that he might redeem those. See the Exodus pattern. Let my son go that he might serve me. That he might redeem those who are under the law. But that's not the end of it. So that we might receive the adoption as sons. Beloved, redemption is not the big cheese. Adoption is what it's all about. God does not redeem Israel from slavery in Egypt so that they would become slaves to him. He redeems Israel from slavery in Egypt so that they might be His son. So that He might take the yoke off their shoulders and that they might stand erect and they might walk and glorify God in the liberty of their sonship. So Jesus has come in the fullness of time set by the Father so that the slavery of the law would end, so that the terrible curse of the law in its broken commandments in our conscience would end, so that our consciences and hearts full of dead works full of all those things which accuse and condemn, so that Satan, the accuser of the brethren, would lose his armour in which he trusts, so that the children would no longer be slaves but sons, and that they would, as sons, cry with one voice, Abba, Father, my Father, my dear Father, how wrong I was. When I was a slave, I was frightened of you. I hid in a corner. I thought that you'd come to destroy me, but you've only ever come to redeem me. Even your judgments have been judgments of mercy. Even the time that you watched me go into the wilderness and walk away like the prodigal son, your eye was on me. The shame that I felt as your eyes of love looked on me were all so that I would finally receive the adoption of sons. I thought you hated me, but you've always loved me. I was so filled with hate and bitterness towards you, my father. I didn't know that you were not filled with hate and bitterness towards me. And so great was your love. that You sent Your Son, Your only Son, to find me. And so great is Your love, our Father, that He came to redeem me by taking the curse of that broken law in His body on the tree. And so great is Your love that as He hung there bearing the curse in His body, so He still prayed for me. Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. And where I thought you were going to be hard and demanding, where I thought you were going to be relentless in your demands for my perfection, you have come to heal, to restore, to forgive, to redeem, to set free, so that I might call you my father. And when you know that God is your father, You know that your relationship with him has never been on the basis of what you've done. Jamie Grant said this afternoon, what would one of his children have to do in order for him to disown one of his children? The answer is, there's nothing he could think of that would ever make him disown one of his children. Is there anything that your children could do that would want to make you disown them? Perhaps it's too searching a question. Perhaps we've had too legal a relationship with our children and perhaps we have disowned them. Perhaps that's some of the grief in your heart tonight that you have when you know you should never have and the grief in the heart shows that you actually haven't. Though a mother might forget her nursing child, I would never forget you. How can I give you up, O Israel? How can I let you go, O Ephraim? The Father in relationship to us, his children, holds us in the affection of his love in Jesus Christ forever. And so Paul says that that adoption of sonship removes the fear. You've not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear. because fear involves punishment, says John. And he who fears is not perfected in love, not in our love, but in the love that God has for us. We do not understand what that love is. So, you've not received that spirit of slavery leaving fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry, Abba, Father. How do you receive the spirit of adoption? The answer is you receive it through a redemption. You receive it through a finished work of Jesus Christ on your behalf and you receive it through Jesus Christ having become curse for you, bearing the curse of the broken law in his body on the tree, bearing all of your judgements, taking away all of the curse, taking away all of the bitterness of the broken law. He comes to you with his hands outstretched and he says to you, peace, peace. It is finished. But he says something even more and this is the second part of what I want to say and more briefly you will be glad to hear. When I went to that cross, I didn't go for myself and in another sense I didn't go by myself. The Father was with me, yes. But in another sense, you were there with me. Jesus Christ in his body on the tree took our old Adam with him. He became the old man. He became the old Adam. He became the sin of that old Adam. Paul is able to say it this way, when Jesus was crucified, I was crucified. When Jesus died, I died. When Jesus was buried, I was buried. So he's able to say to the Colossian Christians, keep your mind set on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, for you have died, past tense. When did you die? One of the places I was preaching earlier in this tour with Hector at Tain, I think it was, there was an elderly gentleman came up that some of our friends here know tonight. And he had one of those groups that sometimes come knocking at the door asking you to take one of their tracks and other things. You'll be familiar with those sort of groups here in Stornoway I'm sure. Not the APCs, I'm not talking about them. But the question when he opened the door was, Sir, are you afraid of death? And this elderly gentleman said, oh no. He said, I died 2,000 years ago. Ah, what do you mean? Beautiful way to look at it, isn't it? When he died, I died, says Paul. Now that comes into my experience at a point when I receive the gift of forgiveness, but in actuality it happened back then. And so Jesus Christ as the Redeemer has never been a sole operative. He came with and for the sake of his people. Let us be baptised. He loves his church. I mean, we look at ourselves in the mirror and particularly as we get older, do you see a spot or a wrinkle or a blemish? George, be honest. When Christ looks at his church, does he see a spot or a wrinkle or a blemish? Not on your nelly. Because every spot and wrinkle and blemish of the church for all time was taken up into Jesus' body on the tree and in exchange we have all of the glory of Jesus Christ given to us and so we can never think of ourselves, should never, must never, Allow ourselves to think of ourselves apart from Jesus. So living as adopted sons, you've got this great pattern of the exodus, you've got this redemption that's taken place and here we close with these few very practical points, I hope. Firstly, every man and woman in Jesus Christ is in Jesus Christ. You are not where you think you are. The world and the flesh and Satan himself will tell you that you are not in Jesus Christ when you are in Jesus Christ. They will hammer your mind and your conscience with the threat and terror of the broken law. They will tell you night after night, day after day, that you are not in Jesus Christ. They will tell you of your sins and your failures. But if any man in Jesus is in Christ, he is a new creation, full stop. And if any man has been baptised into Christ, he has clothed himself with Christ. And so there is no longer male nor female, slave nor free, but all one in Jesus Christ, all members one of another and all together members of Jesus Christ. So you are not where Satan tells you that you are. And we get ourselves into deep trouble when we think of ourselves apart from Jesus Christ. And this is why one of the reasons that Martin Luther said, The word of the Gospel is stronger in the lips of a brother than it is in our own hearts. Because under the weight of the sin and the world and the flesh and the accusation of the evil one as they keep pressing in on you, you in your own heart try to drive and find some solid ground and as you go into your own heart deeper you find more deceit, more mixed motives, more compromised love, everything that you think that was going to separate you from God, you find there in your heart and the word of Christ grows dim. But then a brother comes and a brother speaks to you what Christ has done and the word of Christ is stronger in the words, in the lips of your brother than it is in your own heart because you are members one of another and altogether members of Christ. You never stand by yourself. And so the first and very most important practical thing is this, beloved, never under any circumstances allow yourself to think of yourself apart from Jesus Christ. You've died with him. You've been buried with Him. You've been raised with Him. So in Christ, through Christ, with Christ, you have everything. You have every spiritual blessing. You are justified, sanctified, healed, ransomed, restored, forgiven, loved, embraced by the Father. Indeed, you are in the Father, in Jesus Christ. You are in the very bosom of the Father, in Jesus Christ. And this Jesus Christ who is your elder brother, kinsman, redeemer, who has embraced you in himself on the cross, who has enclosed your whole life in that cross, will never under any circumstances lose any one of his sheep, not ever. And when you see a brother or a sister struggling, please don't tell them to pull up their bootstraps. Please don't drive them down into their hearts to see if they can find any integrity there. Please just tell them of Jesus Christ. Tell them that there is a Lamb. Tell them that they belong to Him. Tell them that Christ has done all, said all, answered for all, paid all, released all. Tell them that they are sons of God in Jesus Christ. But don't tell them that they have to do something about their problem or lift themselves out of their depression. That just leads to a spirit of slavery because it leads to fear again because you can't fix it. So that's the first very practical thing, in Christ, in the Father. Second very practical thing, Because you're in Christ, in the Father, because that judgement has taken away every shred of guilt against you, every element of sin for all time has been washed away through his body on the tree, then you are always in the Father's affection. Even when you as a believer are under the Father's discipline, you're under his affection. The Father's discipline, you will notice in your own experience, always comes with a word that leaves you with joy and hope in your heart. The accusations of the evil one always come threatening gloom and destruction. They come with the voice of a dragon, not with the voice of a lamb. So second very practical application is that in Jesus Christ, no matter what, no matter what you experience, no matter what you suffer, no matter even if that suffering is part of the Lord's discipline upon you, you are never outside the Father's love. He doesn't love you one day if you're good and turn his face from you the next day if you're bad. That's the way our fatherhood works. You are settled in the Father's affections because you are settled in Jesus Christ and when, beloved, as will come to us, you get that terminal diagnosis or something else happens, don't ever think that God has sent this because he's angry with you and wishes to destroy you. Death has lost its sting and even death is a gentle way by which the Father brings His children home. Third very practical point is this. Because you are in Jesus Christ, because in Jesus Christ you are in the Father, you live as God's adopted children now, surrounded, absolutely surrounded, by the blessing of God. And that blessing is manifest in our experience in ways that we sometimes might not realise but the Apostle Paul speaks of these very clearly in Romans Chapter 8. On the one hand, you have the Son of God interceding for you at the right hand of Heaven. On the other hand you have the Spirit of God interceding within your heart with sighs and groanings too deep to utter. And then you have the throne of God the Father which you approach boldly as the throne of grace to find grace and mercy in time of need and so beloved you are always surrounded by the blessing and the affection of the Father, the Son and the Spirit and never under any circumstances is that removed. He doesn't bless you one day and then curse you the next. His word to us in Jesus Christ is Amen and Yes. If you forgive the personal story, but as my wife was dying, as I said to some friends, she was more in heaven than on the earth in the last weeks. And at one point when I was getting ready to tuck her into bed and leave the hospice for the night, I bent over her to give her a kiss goodnight and I just lost it. I just lost the plot. I wept and sobbed and howled. And Bev just reached up from the bed and put her hand around my face and said, Oh sweetie, it's okay. I wish I could tell you how much God loves you. I wish I could tell you. how loved you are. Beloved, that's the way we are, like here was she dying of cancer, filled and immersed with the love of God and out of that place able to be a pastor to her husband. You never, not even at the point of death are you separated from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ. You're surrounded with the blessing. You've got the Father giving grace to help in time of need. You've got the Father showering mercy upon you. You've got the Son interceding for you. You've got the Spirit interceding for you. So Paul says, well what's going to separate us beloved? The fourth very practical benefit is this. When you are living as the adopted son of God and you know that you're in Christ and you're always in the affection of the Father and you're surrounded by the blessing of the Father through the intercession of the Son and the intercession of the Spirit, then you discover that something is in your heart that wasn't there before. It's called love. And in that love which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, guess what happens? The Holy Spirit within you as he sheds abroad that love in your heart sees to it that you fulfil God's law. The law now is not a curse. The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans chapter 13 and Galatians chapter 5 that love is the fulfilment of the law and as the Spirit leads you in the love of the Father, surrounded by the blessing of the Father and the Son, and as he leads you, as the Father sings his love songs over you and as he leads you in the worship, as Christ teaches you to sing love songs back to the Father, so you love the Father and you love the Son and you love the Spirit and so you love his people. and suddenly the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in you because you've loved. If you try and fulfil the law as law, you'll never love. But if you forget about trying to fulfil the law of law and just love the Lord your God, you'll fulfil the law as love because that is what the law is, love. And the final great benefit is this. that as we live as adopted sons of the Father, in the fullness of the Spirit, under the Father's benediction in Christ, knowing all is settled, all is reconciled, all is done, all is finished, so we've got something to proclaim to the world. You proclaim a work that God has completed. and you invite the nations to enter into the rest because God's works have been finished from before the foundation of the world. You don't bring to the nations a law to place on their shoulders to bring them under slavery because that's where they already are. You bring to the nations a proclamation of a gospel that lifts the yoke off their shoulders and sets them free to love, to serve, and where you know the Father as love and where you are closeted in the care of the Father, the Son and the Spirit, then it doesn't matter, beloved. Whether that Gospel is expressed in words or deeds at that point, it just flows in love and the Lord Jesus said something beautiful about that. All men shall know that you are my disciples. Because you stand on a street corner and tell the world it's going to hell? They already know that. No, we've got good news to declare. We've got a Gospel. We've got a finished work. We've got a Son who's interceding for us and we live our whole lives in Him as God's adopted children. And then one day, one day, we'll go to sleep and we'll wake up and we'll see him face to face and his face will be filled with love and his countenance will be beaming out upon us and we'll look at him in the eyes and say, Oh Father, I'm home. And He'll say, Son, I've always been with you. Why did you ever doubt? Enter into your rest. Let's pray. Our Father, dearest Father, how gracious you've been, how long-suffering you've been, and how full of love you still are. And we pray tonight, just simply by your Spirit's ministry, through the Word, that you would open up our hearts to receive all the love that you have for us. Let us not doubt. Let us not waver. Let us not say in our own hearts, it cannot be so. It's too good to be true. It cannot apply to me. My sin is too vast. Let all such thoughts disappear. Let the voice of the accuser be stilled. And let us, like the priests of old, stand by night in the holy place. All the sacrifices finished and all they had was praise. So Father it is for us, we live on the other side of a finished work and we stand by night to lift our voices in praise because you have finished all your works on our behalf. and lead us to your rest. Father, let it be so. Let us know that it is so. In Jesus' name, Amen.