September 17 Sermon: Adopted by God

One of the most powerful images of salvation in Christ is the idea of being adopted into the family of God. Now, this is an idea that comes through in many parts of Scripture, but it is primarily something that we see in the writings of Paul in the New Testament this idea of adoption, and we can see the ramifications of this concept, because we can observe adoption in the world around us and, as a covenant community, as the people gathered here, we have seen this ourselves in recent memory. We have two children who were baptized into the covenant family of this congregation within very recent memory, and we witness firsthand what adoption means, and it is a picture of what God does for you and I. In the Gospel, children who did not have parents are chosen to be brought into a family. They are brought into the family and they are not second-class members of that family. They are children who are not only legally part of the family, but they're loved, they're cherished and they also have all the benefits of being in that family. They are heirs of their parents. And so this is what is drawn out for us in Scripture this idea of being adopted into the family of God, about you and I being children of God in Christ, because in our sin we were orphans, we were living in the streets, we were but beggars and we were in grave danger. But what does God do for his children? He rescues us, and when God rescues us, he isn't just putting us up some place better than the gutter. He doesn't pay for a night for us in a hotel so we can get away from squalor. No, he brings us into His family. We're united to Christ in His life, his death, his resurrection and His ascension, and because of this we are united to the Son. And so, because we're united to Christ, the Son, we are children of God and we have the benefits of everything that he has done. He was the one who paid the price that was needed to pay for our sin, and so now we are children of God, united to Christ. And so this has the benefit that you and I are heirs of God. We're not just living in an upgrade. We have an inheritance with the Father. We're more than living on the fringes of the estate of the Father. We aren't living in a shack in the backyard of God. We've been adopted by God and we live in the house and we have the status as being beloved children. This is who we are in Christ. We have been adopted by God, and it's vital that we not only understand this status, but we need to understand where that status came from, how that comes to be, because we were not born with spiritual silver spoons in our mouths. We were chosen, we were rescued. Christ paid for us when we were in rebellion against God. Now, before we dig into this idea of adoption, this idea of election, some more, I wanna do a quick reset of what we're looking at right now.

In this series that we're in Understanding Grace, we're taking a look at what is known as the doctrines of grace, and these are at the foundation of the Reformed faith. Now, last week, I had a very quick overview of the historical circumstances of the early 17th century that caused these scriptural doctrines to be formulated at what is known as the Synod of Dort in the Netherlands. Now, so there was this meeting at the Synod of Dort in the Netherlands, and this meeting was to address the teachings of someone known as Jacob Arminius and the people who followed him, who were known as the Remonstrants. They had formed five points that taught that humans worked together with God in salvation, but there was a synergism in the process of being saved. There was synergism. Well, the Reformed folk of that time, which is now modern day, germany and Switzerland and the Netherlands, were concerned with this teaching, and there were also representatives from England. They came together at the Synod in Dortric, the Netherlands, to come up with statements against these five points that would have this synergistic idea of salvation where God and man work together. And they came together with the five points of Calvinism, or the Canons of Dort.

And so, to summarize these points, I shared with you last week that we used the word tulip to help us remember these doctrines of grace, and so we're going to run through them again quick, because I had a few folks say are you going to save these again? Because you moved that slide too quick for me and I didn't catch them all. So this week I'm going to review them again and it'll be up there a little bit longer for you. So last week we looked at total depravity, and so this was the teaching that we have been rendered incapable of obtaining righteousness before God on our own. Okay, so that's total depravity.

Now this week we're taking a look at the doctrine of unconditional election, and this is the idea that we are brought into the family of God, that we are adopted by sheer grace and no doing of our own. Now, next week, we're going to look at the hardest one, that is known as limited atonement, and this is about the extent of the saving work of Jesus and who the saving work of Jesus is applied to. But in two weeks, we'll take a look at irresistible grace, which talks about the truth that in order to hear, in order to understand the gospel, we need a work of the Holy Spirit in us, so that we don't resist the grace of God, because we would never come to this on our own. And so we embrace the gospel because the Holy Spirit has quickened faith in our hearts and caused our ears to hear the truth of it. And then, finally, in week five of this series, understanding Grace, we're going to look at the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, which expresses the idea that if God went through all this stuff, if God went through T U L and I, he's not going to let you fade away. Okay, he is going to keep you in his grace. If he's going to rescue you from depravity and sin, then he is going to hold on to you. So those are the things that we're going to be looking at. So I've set the table and I've shown you a picture of all the courses and even the dessert.

So let's get into the doctrine of unconditional election today, as we consider this important concept so honestly, many, many people balk at the idea of election because they have the idea that people who speak about the doctrine of election somehow think they're better. Oh, we're the elect. We're better than everybody else. That's why they're the elect. God chose them because they were better. But that's actually the opposite of what the doctrine of election is teaching.

Because notice the order of tulip the first thing that we looked at was the doctrine. The first thing we looked at in the doctrines of grace was our inability, was our incapability. At the heart of our understanding. U is T. We understand that we are incapable of having favor before God on our own accord. We can't do it, and that is absolutely essential for us to understand. If we miss that, we're not going to understand the rest of the stuff. Because if you think you're elect because you're better than someone else, then you don't understand the doctrine of election at all. You've totally missed the point. The point is that we are depraved wretches who need to be rescued. You have nothing of your own before God. So we get this idea in the passage that we read from the book of Deuteronomy.

Now, while we normally see the discussions about election referencing the writings of Paul in the New Testament, it is a principle that is found throughout all of scripture. The idea is there everywhere, and here in Deuteronomy, we get an important understanding of this doctrine by the way in which God chose the people of Israel. So as we turn to this text today, we see right away that the people are being told that their relationship to Yahweh is unique. They are holy to Him, and it's important that we remember what holy means. Holy means to be set apart. It doesn't mean that God likes them best because they were the most clean living people that ever walked the face of the planet. No, god saw them and he set them apart to be holy. It wasn't because they were holy that he set them apart. He set them apart to be holy, and you know this when you think about the stories of scripture right, think back on the stories before Deuteronomy.

You would never get the idea that the people of God In Genesis, Deuteronomy, are wholly based upon their own works, right? That isn't how the story is told at all in the first books of the Bible, starting with the fall. We have stories of fail here, one after the other, in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, et cetera. Going forward, the story is told about God's faithfulness to people who have failed, even Noah. Noah, who is the righteous one, who is set apart to be rescued from the judgment of God. What do we get? After Noah gets off the boat, we get that story about how he's drunk and how what a mess his family is. Right. Even Noah doesn't come out looking good.

In the early parts of scripture, everybody is a train wreck, but God rescues his people. Perfect example God rescued the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt and he displays his power in the plagues at the Red Sea, in bringing the manna, having water from the rock. And the next thing you know these people who have visibly seen the power of God, who have experienced his miracles, they have literally been rescued through a sea. They have been given food and drink by the mighty hand of God. They are bowing down before a calf that came out of fire and they call it Yahweh. They are idolaters. Idolaters that's a bad difference to make there. They're probably they're spiritual adulterers, but they were idolaters at heart. They were not a pristine people in any sense, but God made them holy. He set them apart to be a people for himself, and the language that's used here is beautiful. God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession. God chose them.

The focus is not on what the people of God have done to merit this, but instead the focus is on what God has done and what he is doing for his people. In fact, the emphasis here is actually strong in this regard. They've been chosen out of all the peoples of the earth, and these are people who have heard the stories of the nations All the nations are told about in the book of Genesis. They know who these people are. They know that they're huge groups of people. They were in Egypt in slavery. They know about all these other people, and here the book of Deuteronomy says you have been chosen from among all of these people. And here they are in their wanderings. They've interacted with all these other people and it seems as though they're just out in the wilderness. But yet God is saying I have all these people you've seen around you, even though you are less in number. I have chosen you to be a people for my treasured possession, and if they were ever thinking of themselves pretty highly because they were God's people.

The whole mindset is deflated here in this text. It's because he says it isn't because you were a big group of folk. God didn't look down and say, hey, that's a nice big group, that should be my people. They're a large family, they have lots of power and influence in the world. That's who I'm going to choose. That isn't what God does. In fact, he reminds them that they are the fewest of peoples. The reason God said his grace upon them is because he loves them, and this is powerful here. It's because Yahweh loves you that he has set you apart and he is keeping the oath that he swore to their fathers. And so the translation here of this is God loves you. God loves you and he keeps his promises. And he loves you so much and he is so faithful to what he has said that he has brought you up out of the house of slavery. All the stuff that you saw in Egypt the plagues, the Red Sea, the manna from heaven, the water from the rock all of it is because God loves you and because he keeps his promises to his people. That's why all of that took place is because Yahweh loves you, and you see what I'm driving at here.

Election is not about us, it's about God, and this is the witness of Scripture from beginning to end. Salvation from God is about his steadfast love. It's about his faithfulness shown to 1,000 generations, and this is why it's a big part of how we talk as reform folk. We talk about covenant, because God makes a covenant with his people, and if he is the one making that covenant, he's going to keep it. He is faithful. God is a covenant keeper.

But we read here in Deuteronomy as well that there are those who break covenant. We read that there are those on whom he does not show his favor, those who are in rebellion against him, and so we see that, because God is faithful, his people should be faithful to him. God has shown his favor to them, and so they're called to keep his statues, to obey his law, because it is not good to put yourself above God. You should instead humble yourself. In other words, it's good to have the favor of God, it's good to be the people of God, so live as he has called you to do. Now. This unconditional election that we're considering today is shown to us in the way in which God chose Israel. But when you and I speak about election, we're talking about his election of people as individuals, right? So does what we read here apply to the new covenant people of God? Does it apply to us as individuals? Well, in Romans 9, which we read all of, we see that the apostle Paul teaches us that this election of the nations of the nation of Israel points to and shows us the principle of election in the new covenant.

When you get to Romans 9, paul is dealing with something important in the book of Romans this idea that the gospel has gone out to Gentiles. This would have been outlandish. We've talked about this many times. The idea that Gentiles would be able to come to faith, that non-Hebrew folk, non-jewish people would be able to have faith, is outlandish. And so Paul is dealing with this as he comes to Romans 9, that Gentiles, like you and I, are coming to faith in Christ, the Messiah. But the people of Israel, not as a whole but as a great majority, have rejected the Messiah, have rejected Christ. Now, at some point we're going to work our way through Romans together and get a deeper understanding of all this, but today we're going to do a quick overview of this difficult stuff in Romans 9. So, basically, paul has deep sadness that so many of his fellow Jewish folks have rejected Christ. They've rejected the Messiah. In fact, we see here that it pains him so much that he wishes that he could be cut off and so and others could have faith in Jesus.

And here he says that the Hebrew people have it all and they have seen the beauty of what God has revealed, to the point of being able to see what salvation was pointed to in the Old Covenant. He lists everything that they have here. They were adopted as a nation, they had the glory of God revealed to them, they were the cradle that carried the covenants. God revealed his law to them, he gave them the temple worship that prefigured the sacrifice of the Messiah, and they heard all of these promises of God. And the story of their heritage tells this unfolding drama of redemption through the patriarchs that will one day lead to the incarnation of the second person of the trinity in human flesh, and not only just human flesh, remember the flesh of Jesus was ethnically Jewish. Ethnically he was a Hebrew.

And so Paul is basically asking the question what in the world is God doing here? The word of God and the promises of God have failed Right. All this talk of God's steadfast love, and now the majority of his people are rejecting the revelation of Jesus as the Messiah. What's going on here? This is an important question that Paul needs to answer for these people. He's writing the book of Romans to, and so we see Paul's response to these questions in Romans 9.6 through 8.

Now, as we look at this, of what this is saying here, it's not as though the word of God has failed, for not all who are descended from Israel belongs to Israel. The best I've ever heard this explained was by Dr Kim Riddelbarger many years ago on the radio show the White Horse Inn, and so I'm going to steal what he had to say. So essentially, what Paul is saying here is that even in the old covenant, not every person was saved. They were all in the national covenant, but not every person in Israel put their faith in the promise and believed in salvation. In the coming Messiah, at the height of the kingdom of Israel, when everything was going great David's reign, there would have been those who didn't have faith. They trusted in their own works for salvation. They believed that they could save themselves, and even during the lowest points of the Old Testament. Think to when they would have been in exile in Babylon, that people were falling away to the pagan worship of the Baals and Asherah. In that worse circumstances. There was a faithful person in Babylon who looked to the promise of the Messiah and they were saved. It was never that everyone was saved as a whole. Even in the Old Testament is what Paul is saying. You get the idea here. Not everyone who was ethnically a Jew was saved.

It isn't those who are children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are the offspring. And to prove this point, paul goes back to the stories that we know so well. In Genesis and this really helps the promise was to Abraham and his offspring, but Abraham had more offspring. The promise wasn't to Ishmael, it was to Isaac. Okay, so the promise is through Isaac. Okay, understood, hagar, ishmael's mother wasn't from the right family. Oh, but wait, the promise is through Isaac.

Well then, paul points out that the promise of the Messiah went through Jacob and not Esau. Okay, they were not only brothers from the same mother, they were in the same womb, they were there together, and God chose Jacob before either of them had done a thing. And in fact we see this statement in the Old Testament that Paul quotes Jacob I love, but Esau I hated. Now you and I, we naturally recoil at that statement, I think because we all desire to love our children equally, but I think that we focus on the wrong part of that phrase. We hear the word hate and that's sort of a flashing red light word for us. It's a strong word, so we focus on the hate, but remember we are all in rebellion against God. Our understanding of total depravity informs our understanding of election. So the point here isn't that God hated Esau, it's that he loved Jacob. It's that he loved Jacob. He chose him not because of his merits before him, but before he was born. He set Jacob apart.

And of course this draws out a lot of difficult questions for us, because we're human, we can't fully grasp the sovereignty of God. But we need to let our understanding of God's love and mercy cause us to trust the truth that God works all things together for his glory. That's what Paul talks about. He actually foresees all of our questions in verses 14 through 16 and speaks of them. Is there injustice on God's part. Is God guilty of injustice? No, god is God. God can't be unjust. He will have mercy on whom he has mercy and compassion on those whom he has compassion.

Again, our state of rebellion means that no one is going to work their way to God. We're all like Israel. We are all the least of people. We are all the chief of sinners. Every one of us is born dead in trespasses and sins. We are all completely incapable of saving ourselves from sin, death, hell and the devil. God is not unjust in leaving anyone in their sin. Because we have done this to ourselves, we have plunged ourselves into that misery.

And the point of what we're thinking about today, this idea of unconditional election, is driven home in this last statement here, that it depends not on human will or exertion but on God who has mercy. And this is a difficult doctrine, and I honestly greatly appreciate seeing you hanging with me here, and so I wanna bring it home in a practical way as much as I possibly can, because this doctrine of election is not just something that eggheads sit around seminary lounges and talk about. This is ridiculously practical for you and I as we live as God's people in his world, because every day you and I witness the sin of the world, and we acknowledge that that same sin that we see in the world plagues us as well, because we know that our rebellion against God is not only in our actions, but it's in our thoughts, it's present in our desires. We are rebellious against God, and when we see that in the world and within ourselves, you and I can easily wonder have I done enough to please God? Have I merited righteousness before him? Will I go to heaven? Can I do enough? And when we think about it, we know we can't do enough before a holy God. And so how can you and I have absolute confidence and peace and hope and joy that after we breathe our last, we will go into the joy of his salvation? How can we have absolute confidence? And the answer to that question is that you and I can never do enough. And so you were made a child of God. You were a child of wrath, and you deserved it, because we are all creatures of the dirt who have rebelled against our Creator.

None of us have merited righteousness before God on our own, but there was one, there was one who came in our flesh and he merited righteousness before God, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. God the Son took on our very own flesh and he perfectly kept the law. That is the entire list of every person who ever merited righteousness before God, and the good news is that, through faith, you receive that perfect righteousness, and he takes your sin. You have been united to Christ in his life, death, resurrection and ascension, and so you have merited righteousness before God because he gave you that gift. And the reason it had to be given to us is because of the bad news.

We are so rebellious in our sin that on our own, we would reject that gift, and so we need the work of the Holy Spirit in us. We are depraved wretches who believe that we can do it on our own, and so God, who has mercy, comes to our hearts of stone, he regenerates us while we are dead in sin and unbelief, and he gives us the gift of faith. And he does this by sheer grace, because he has compassion on us, he elects us, he appoints us to salvation, apart from any works of our own, because we have none. And so the news actually gets even better because, as I talked about when I began this morning, this means that we are adopted into the family of God. We are heirs of the kingdom of God, again, not because of anything that we have done.

It depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who shows mercy, and so this is not a teaching that causes us to be snobs or to feel like we're the elite, but instead we realize that God has reached down into the mire and he has pulled us out. We have been blessed with the gift of faith and the gift of repentance, and so this leads us to respond in gratitude for the mercy that God has shown us in Christ. We now desire to live as the children of God, because he has taken us out of the gutters and given us a home in his mansion. We're sons and daughters of the Most High, and so may the doctrine of election drive you to have hope and to live a life of holiness. God has set you apart to glorify himself, and you can live in confidence, absolute confidence of your salvation, because it isn't your righteousness that has done a thing to bring you salvation. Instead, it is God who has given you salvation, and it is God who, in Christ, had mercy upon you, and so may this not only lead you to live as he commands.

But may it cause this story of God's saving work to be on your lips, that God, the Holy Spirit, might use the proclamation of that glorious gospel of the salvation of sinners that bring spiritual orphans into the family of God to bring others who here to faith. That we might together praise as the people of God called to be a people for his possession, to praise him for that saving work that he has done for us. Amen,

This message was delivered on September 17, 2023 by Pastor Mark Groen at First Reformed Church in Edgerton, MN. First Reformed is a congregation in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.