The Gospel of Adoption

It's the best sermon that's ever been preached on justification last night. At Undivided. That was our, conference, for, the unmarried. I guess there was about 300 people there out at Foothill in Upland.

They had a great time. And Our own Pastor Milton did represent. So praise the Lord for that. this morning, we're going to, Be talking about the doctrine of adoption.

So, last night several of you heard the doctrine of justification. This morning we're going to move into the doctrine of adoption. It sometimes surprises people when I tell them that I was adopted at 14 years of age. at 14 years of age, before I was adopted, I I had a rather rough upbringing.

My father was a cruel master. my life was, dominated by slavery. And sin. And then one day, a woman came into my life, an elderly woman, and shared the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, with me, and I believe the gospel and I was adopted into the family of God.

And my whole life was radically changed. And while I had a wonderful, I just want to clarify that my human father was a great father. it was the father, my, my former father, the devil, that was a cruel master, but I was transferred out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light, was adopted into the family of God. And one of the things that for me was especially, that I really appreciate as a young person is growing up in a, in a home that was not a Christian home is being brought into the family of God meant that I, I really felt the sense of being adopted into a new family.

right away I had. the Hudson's picking me up for church as a 14 year old, and they took me under their wing. I had the Bakers taking me out to youth group on Thursday nights. I had my youth pastor teaching me things like guitar and manhood.

I had other youth sponsors in my life that were ministering to me and helping me overcome sin when I skipped out on my mother's birthday to go to church because Even against my parents' wishes, because I felt that's what God would want me to do. One of my youth sponsors took me aside and said, Mike, I appreciate your zeal, but you need to submit to your parents. And if your parents want you to stay home one Sunday for your mom's birthday, then do that. I had these caretakers for me, and many of them I am still, I still am related to to this day.

I could call, brothers and sisters that I've known since 14. I could call mothers and fathers that I've known since 14 and, and, and still connect with them and get advice from them, and I'm very grateful for the adoption, that I have experienced over the years and then even just coming here to Cornerstone back in 1993. I came as a single person and, and I was influenced by many, many people in this church including Pastor Milton and Jim and Betty Brown that did my premarital counseling and, and, have really benefited over the years from this particular family.

And if we think very long, all of us that are believers can, can appreciate the benefit of being adopted into the family of God, one, the relationship that we have with God, we're going to be talking about that, but also the relationship that we have with one another.

And so what I want to do this morning is I want to start by just defining our term, adoption. We're going to spend a little time just defining that. And then we're gonna look at four different aspects of adoption. This may end up being a series that goes longer than Just this morning, there's no way that we could talk about everything that pertains to adoption in, in one message, but in those four aspects of adoption, we're going to talk about the doctrine of adoption and how that works itself out in our own salvation in our relationship with God.

But then, we're going to talk about how we have the opportunity to image and mirror our God when we actually do, what the Bible calls caring for orphans ourselves when the church comes along. And adopts people into their own families, that there's a gospel basis for adoption, so we're gonna start with that gospel basis and then we're gonna talk about the adoption of actual children into our homes. So let's start first of all with what is adoption, and you can turn to John chapter 1 if you wish.

I'm going to actually put this passage on the screen so that you can see a little bit how we could diagram this particular verse, but John chapter 1 starting in verse 12.

But as many as received Him, as many as received Christ, to them, he gave the right. God gave a right to certain individuals who believed in Him, who received Him. He gave them a right to do what to become children of God. There's a right that has been granted to everyone who has received Jesus Christ, and this right is to become children of God to those who believe in his name.

And then John goes on to clarify who were born not of blood. We're not talking about a natural birth. We're not talking about the same genetic material. We're not talking about DNA connection, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man.

We didn't choose to be adopted. We didn't choose to become sons and daughters, but of God. This was God's choice. God looked out upon us who were separated from Him.

Who had another father. And he adopted us. He chose us and brought us into his family, and he gave us the right to be called the children of God. It's from passages like this and other passages that we'll look at here in a moment that we can drive this definition.

Adoption is an act of God whereby He makes us members of his family. It's an act of God. It's not something that we wake up one day and say, I want to be adopted by God, and so I'm gonna solicit God for this adoption. But surely we hear the gospel call and we do make a choice to receive Him, but it is God who adopts us.

It's an act of God whereby He makes us members of His family and all that that entails Him being our Father, Christ being our brother, and then this family of God that we come into when we come to receive the Lord Jesus Christ. The term adoption, at the time of Christ or at the time of the writings of Paul, it's Paul that speaks most frequently about this particular doctrine. The concept would have been like a An adult male that was well to do would find another male whom he wanted to pass on his name and his inheritance to, and he would adopt this particular male.

There was a ceremony that you could go through called adoptio, where the, the adopting father would meet with the natural father, and they would go through this, this little play, this little ceremony.

And the natural father would go through the act of selling his son and then buying his son back and then selling his son and buying his son back and then selling his son a third time and then the 3rd time he would not buy his son back. And the and the adopting father would then go to a Roman official and plead his case to become the rightful father of this child, and then it would be decided by the official that now this adopting father had all of the rights of the natural father.

And he became by law his father, and that son became the son in every sense of any natural born son and became the heir of everything that the father then owned. This is part of what Paul and the Bible writers had in mind probably when they were using terms like adoption as well as just the Old Testament background that we see on the pages of the Old Testament of adoption and and caring for orphans and whatnot, which we'll look at in a moment.

I think it's a healthy thing for us to go back and, and not just to do our theology and doctrine in a vacuum, but to consider what Christians said throughout the centuries about the various doctrines and teachings that we look at. And so as we go back and look at the Westminster catechism, we see this wonderful definition of the doctrine of adoption. All those that are justified, God vouchsafes in and for His only Son Jesus Christ, to make partakers of the grace of adoption. By which they are taken into the number and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God, have His name put upon them, receive the spirit of adoption, have access to the throne of grace with boldness, are enabled to cry, Abba, Father.

are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by him as by a father, yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption, inherit the promises as heirs of everlasting salvation. That's an excellent summary of what the Bible says about the doctrine of adoption. JRE Packer says in his book Knowing God, where I asked to focus the New Testament message into three words, my proposal would be adoption through propitiation. That God is adopting us in His into His family through the wrath bearing blood of Christ.

Christ died on the cross, not just to be a good example, but actually bear the wrath of Almighty God so that we could now call God Father. Packer goes on to say For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian, as opposed to merely Jewish is summed up in the knowledge of the fatherhood of God. Father is the Christian name for God. It's not as if the Jews in the Old Testament never called God their Father, but we see in the progress of revelation that it's really in the New Testament that you see God revealing Himself fully as Father to His children.

The Old Testament, the emphasis seems to be more on the holiness of God, more upon God seems to be more distant in his relationship with God, but as we come into Christ, the Son of God, we gain all of the status that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has, and we'll look at some of those passages here in just a moment. Packer also says that adoption is the highest privilege that the gospel offers, even higher than justification. How can we say that adoption is a higher privilege than justification?

Well, just imagine for a second, as wonderful as the doctrine of justification is, imagine that you were justified but never adopted.

What relationship would you have with God? Well, we would know God as the judge that pronounced us not guilty. We would know God as a good and holy God that is no longer going to judge us, but we would not call Him Father. We would not know Him as we would not know Christ as our brother.

And so adoption, while all of these doctrines hang upon one another, adoption is a sweet and blessed privilege that we have, as Christians. So let's talk for a moment about 4, I guess aspects of this doctrine of the doctrine of adoption adoption. The first one I want to talk about is adoption has a past. Adoption has a past and we can talk about that past, first of all, negatively speaking, when we look at passages like Ephesians chapter 2.

When you begin to study the doctrine of adoption, there's a lot of terms that jump out, begin to jump out from the pages of scripture other than just the word adoption itself. Once you realize that we are sons by adoption, then whenever you see sons, you realize that that's connected to this concept of adoption. Whenever you see children, that's connected to this concept of adoption. Whenever you see Father Christ is our Father, that's connected to this concept of adoption, and the reverse is so when you see sons of disobedience, as in the passage we'll read right here.

That means it's connected to the fact that you are not adopted or you were not adopted at this point in time. Paul says you were dead in trespasses and sins. You formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air. That was our former father, the devil.

Of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. We used to not be sons of God, but sons of disobedience. Among them, we too all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging in the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath as the rest. There was a time when you and I were not sons of God, but were sons of disobedience.

We were not children of God, but we were children of wrath. There's a mistaken notion in some circles that everyone who has been created is a child of God. The Bible knows no such language. The Bible speaks of two types of children.

In First John 3:10, by this, the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious, and it goes on to say that whoever does not love his brother is not a child of God. Jesus, when he's debating the Pharisees and talking to the Pharisees, they're trying to claim their connection to their father Abraham. And Jesus says, oh contrary, you are of your father, the devil. Our natural father has fangs.

And he is not a kind father. In Ezekiel 15, we see an, an amazing image where God comes upon the road in this picture. This is a metaphor of God and his relationship with Israel. In chapter 4, God says, as for your birth, on the day you were born, your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water for cleansing.

You were not rubbed with salt or even wrapped in cloths. No eye looked with pity on you to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you. You were thrown out into the open field, for you were aboard on the day you were born. When I passed by you and saw you squirming in your blood.

I said to you while you were in your blood, live. I said, you, I said to you while you were in your blood, live. The picture of Israel before they come in, come into a covenant relationship with God is of a discarded baby, an aborted baby that is still alive, laying on the side of the road. And in ancient times, even in today's, even today, this is not at all an uncommon occurrence when someone has a baby that is unwanted to just discard them on the side of the road.

The Romans at the time of Christ did not believe a baby actually became living until the 8th day. And male babies were desirable and so it was not uncommon at all for a Roman a woman to have a female baby and for the servants to take that baby and expose the baby is what they called it, to the elements to just lay the baby out on the dirt or on the rocks and let it die. This is the picture of Israel, and I would submit to you that this by application is the picture of us before Christ.

Before Christ we were sons, but sons of disobedience.

We were children but children of wrath, and coming from our natural Father, the devil, we're just discarded babies lying in the dirt, squirming in our own blood. But positively speaking, as we look back upon our adoption, We see in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 3, where Paul says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love, He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace which He freely bestowed on us in the beloved.

What we have here is in the eternal counsels of God, even before you and I were born, we have within the decrees of God this decision that you and I would be adopted.

All of those that would come into Christ that would respond to the gospel call, this passage indicates that we were predestined to adoption. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, as he chose us before the foundation of the world, he looked out and saw a squirming baby in the dirt and said, You shall live. And so this is part of our past. Part of our past is to recall the fact that while you and I by nature are children of wrath and sons of disobedience, while we have this Father with things, God looked in kindness upon you.

God looked in kindness upon me and said, Live. Before you and I were even born. How many of you in this room remember the day of your birth? You ask my children, they'll raise their hands.

Yeah. They see the videos and Anna's convinced that she can remember coming out of the womb. She sees the video. Of, coming out of mama's stomach actually, cesarean section.

She was a bloody mess, right? I contend to you that Anna does not remember the day she was born. You and I do not remember the day we were born. We were given birth there was by our parents.

God chose to bring us into this world and, and we became sons by birth. But there are those of us in this church that actually went out and chose to bring somebody else into their family that did not come in by birth. There are several families in our church that went out and said we are going to go and choose a child and bring them into our home and love them, and they will be our child, and we will raise them to the glory of God and we will love them and they will be our children.

This is the picture that we have in the doctrine of adoption.

The doctrine of adoption doesn't call us to think of our natural birth. The doctrine of adoption calls to think that we were discarded, we were unwanted, and yet God chose us, and he loves us, and he commits Himself to us to be our Father and to never leave us nor forsake us. The doctrine of adoption rings forth in the real world when moms and dads go out and adopt children and bring them into their family. They are imaging God.

They are picturing God and his character when this is done, and we see that this is a choice that parents make, and this is a choice that God made to bring us into his family. Let's talk about a 2nd aspect of adoption. Our adoption has a past, but our adoption has a present. We see in Galatians chapter 4.

Verse 4 When the fullness of time came, The fullness of time came. God sent forth His Son. There was a moment in history where God said now is the time. He sent forth His Son born of a woman born under the law in order that he might redeem those, he might buy those, he might purchase those who were under the law.

This is not a cheap purchase. This is an expensive proposition. It costs the blood of Jesus Christ that he might redeem those under the law, that we might. Here's the purpose that we might, why is, what is the purpose of redemption?

That we might receive the adoption of sons. The purpose of this expense, the purpose of the shed blood of Christ, The purpose of this expense of redemption is that we might not just be disconnected from a judge that declares us not guilty, but that we might come into the family as adoption as sons. And because you are sons, Paul says to the Galatians, you are sons. God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

Therefore, you are no longer a slave, but a son. When a Roman man adopted a slave and made him a son, that slave now gained all of the rights and privileges of any natural born son. The time came when God decided that Christ should come and be born on this earth and that he should live on this earth and that he should die so that we could be adopted as sons into the family of God. Now I want you to notice that it says here in the Bible and in the original text that you might receive the adoption as sons.

The temptation for us these days, and I know the temptation of any preacher or anybody reading their Bible, is to say, sons. And daughters, right? This isn't just an adoption of sons, is it? Isn't it an adoption of sons and daughters?

And while it is true that obviously God is adopting both men and women, we miss the point if we try to add and daughters to this particular phrase, because you need to understand that what we're talking about here is the fact that there's an inheritance that is being passed down to the son. And if you're a woman or a man and you are brought in as a son, you receive that full inheritance as a son. Do you understand that in the ancient world, the inheritance did not go to the daughter, the inheritance went to the son.

And all of us in this room, men, woman, and child that know the Lord Jesus Christ, are sons in this sense.

We've been adopted and that we receive the full rights of sonship and inheritance, and we come and we cry Abba, Father through the Spirit. So our adoption has a present. I want you to consider just for a moment as an aside, that when the fullness of time came, Christ came and he was born of a woman. But he also had a human father.

A father named Joseph, sometimes, you see these little Christmas plays and whatnot, and Joseph is this background character that hardly says anything and gets kicked off the stage as soon as you can get him out of there. But think about the fact that Joseph, had to make some choices. Mary was, the Lord appeared to Mary and says, the Holy Spirit's gonna come upon you and, and she responded favorably, but, God just said, boom, you're gonna have a child, right? Joseph, theoretically could have had the angel appear to him and he could have said, I'm not doing that.

I'm not going to subject myself to the shame of taking upon a woman who's already pregnant. I'm not going to take upon myself the shame of taking upon a bastard or what people would consider to be a bastard, right? I'm not going to take upon myself the indignity of having people question the legitimacy of my family. But yet Joseph responds to the heavenly vision and marries the wife of Christ and adopts the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so while Jesus had a natural mother with all of the DNA of his mother, if you were to take the blood of Jesus Christ and scrape it off of the cross and test it, you wouldn't find any of Joseph's DNA there. And yet he was the one that became the adopted father of Christ. And it's interesting that it's Joseph is the one to whom the Lord appears when he says get up and go to Egypt as the protector of his wife and child. It's Joseph that responds and gets up and leaves his livelihood just to get up and move to Egypt is not like today getting up and moving to San Diego.

He left his livelihood as a carpenter and moved to a foreign country. And then got up and had to move back and all of the things that Joseph does, it's just interesting to see how that later on as we are taught about our salvation it's called adoption and yet Christ Himself had an adopted father, adoptive father. Consider Romans 14. For all who are being led by the Spirit, these are the sons of God, for you are not, you have not received the spirit of slavery, leading to fear again, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by which we cry out, Abba, Father, the Spirit bears witness with our, with our spirit that we are children of God.

This is part of The present aspect of our adoption. If you are a child of God today, if the Lord Jesus Christ, then you are a son and you've been given the gift of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is continually bearing testimony within you as you read the Bible and as you look out upon the world. We know that this world has fallen, and his sons and his children, we look out and we see the fallen world.

We see the fallenness in us, and we groan, do we not? We groan and we long for the day when our adoption will be fully completed. And we'll talk about that in a moment, but there's this groaning where we groan with the Spirit, and as we groan, we're given testimony to the fact that we really are part of this family. This heavenly family that right now is in this transient state in this fallen world where our former father, the devil is still out trying to do his business, creation is still underneath the curse, our own hearts are still subject to this remaining sin, and so the very groaning that we have in our spirits gives testimony to the fact that we are children of God.

If we never groaned, Then there would be something wrong. But the fact that we groan and we suffer and we realize that something's not right gives testimony to the fact because God groans, the Spirit groans, Christ groans, as we wait for the full adoption of this creation and the adoption of our bodies. We cry out Abba Father. I think the concept, at least here, that you, you notice that whenever Paul's using Abba Father, it's crying out.

sometimes we see this as pictured as a little child coming up to his father and just saying, Daddy, which that might work in other contexts, but within the context of the doctrine of adoption passages, Galatians and Romans and whatnot, the concept seems to be Daddy help. the sense of groaning that we feel as the Spirit is bearing witness with our spirit, reminding us that we are His children. Let's quickly just look at a just a couple of privileges here. We don't have much time for this, but, some of the privileges of our adoption, one is just being able to speak to God and relate to him as a good and loving father.

This is a privilege that the vast majority of the people in the world in the history of the world have not been able to experience. If the Lord Jesus Christ this morning, you get to relate to Almighty God as Father. He loves you. He understands you.

He pities you, He cares for your needs. He gives many good gifts. And he forgives our sins daily as we come to Him and say, Father, forgive us our debts as we forgive those that have sinned against us. He knows that we are but dust as the Father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion upon us.

We also know that we are led by the Spirit. That's part of our adoption. God disciplines us as children. This is a privilege that God does not just leave us to our own means, but he comes in and, and lovingly disciplines us so that we may grow and be partakers of holiness.

We have the privilege of sharing with Jesus' sufferings and in His glory, and we can relate to one another as a family, as we're all part of this household and brothers and sisters and mothers that we have here in this place, and we have the privilege of imitating and honoring our Father in heaven. Let's talk thirdly about a third aspect, adoption. Our adoption has a, a past as a present, but our adoption also has a future as we look at what the scriptures have to say. Continuing again in Romans 8:17.

Paul says, and if children heirs also. Heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. Think about that, a fellow heir with Christ. Isn't that pretty cool to be an heir with Jesus Christ, the inheritance that Jesus Christ is getting, and he has experienced the first fruits of it now as he's at the right hand of the Father, we get all of that privilege.

If indeed we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him, for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed, for the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. One of the things that you get in Romans 8 in this adoption passage is we've been adopted, we've been made sons, and therefore we're heirs. of all that is is promised to Christ, but in the interim between now and our full inheritance, there's suffering and there's groaning, there's anxiousness, and this should be expected for those who are children of a Father, and yet the world is still inhabiting or the devil is still inhabiting our world.

This side of heaven, there is anxiousness, this side of heaven, there is concern, this side of heaven, there is groaning, but we are coming to a place where all of those things will be set aside.

Verse 20, for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of him who subjected it in hope. that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to the corruption of the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Even creation has been affected by the fall. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth until now.

And not only this, but also we ourselves having the first fruits of the Spirit, we ourselves grow within ourselves waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. Say, wait a second, Paul. You've just told us that we were adopted. Now you're saying we're waiting for adoption.

And this is, this is the way Scripture often speaks is there's an already not yet aspect of our adoption. We are adopted and it's so certain that we can be called heirs. It's going to happen. It's, we're not going to get unadopted by the Father, but yet we're waiting to come into our inheritance, and that is the full realization of our adoption when we arrive in heaven.

And we are fully related to our Father and we're able to be with Christ and physically look into his face. When we see Him, we will be like him, right? First John, behold what manner of love the Father's bestowed on us that we should be called the children of God. Therefore, the world does not know us because it did not know Him.

Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be. We are children of God, John says, but it has not yet been revealed what we shall be. But we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for He shall, we shall see Him as He is. We've been adopted into this family, and now we are being recreated throughout our lifetimes into the image of God, and we're becoming more and more like our brother.

But when Christ our brother returns, we will be like Him. For we will see him as he is. there's studies that have been done on those parents versus those that do not have any children, and the studies indicate that parents have much more stress, anxiety and depression. Much more stress, anxiety, and depression than those that are not parents.

And one could draw from that study that well maybe none of us should have children. But just imagine why. Why do parents have anxiety? Why would parents deal with depression?

Why would parents have worry? I've, I've I've been sorrowful. At the, at the losses of other people. When I hear about, this girl recently who walked across the train tracks and was killed.

It was very tragic, and I, I was very sorrowful about that. But it would not hit me like if one of my own children walked across the train tracks and was killed, right? there are things about having children. That brings about anxiety and depression and worry.

But now while that can be a sinful thing, are we not imaging our Father who is concerned about us, the Father, like the prodigal son who is looking out on the horizon for his son to return? Are we not imaging the Lord Himself? As he has compassion and, and pities and considers and thinks about us and his concern for us. There's something very holy, something very necessary, this, this side of redemption, this side of heaven.

where we groan and, and, and mourn, and we get to experience the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. So we see that adoption has a future. That we are actually waiting for the fullness of our adoption. But lastly, let's talk about this, and that is adoption is more than a metaphor.

When we consider our own adoption. We know that God chose us. As it were, he took us as discarded babies from the dirt squirming in our own blood. When the fullness of time came, he adopted us.

He redeemed us through the blood of Christ. And there's coming a day when we will fully experience the inheritance and our adoption will be fully realized in heaven as we get to inherit with Christ. Our relationship with the father and all of the privileges of being a son. And yet The Bible seems to not just pull adoption out of, it's not like the Bible writers, writers said, hey, here's a neat analogy that will just pull out of the air.

Similar to marriage. Paul didn't just say, wow, let's, let's look for an analogy for Christ in the church. I know, I'll talk about a husband and a wife. I think we, if we think very much about this subject very much length, we realize that God in His eternal decrees created Adam, Adam and Eve and created a marriage that would one day picture the church.

And picture the, the love that a husband has for his wife as Christ loves the church and God looking out in his eternal decrees. And wanting ways for us to demonstrate his love for us, saw that there would be this thing called adoption and shows that that would be one of the terms on the pages of his love letter to us that would demonstrate his relationship with us, that it's more than just legal declaration not guilty, but it's bringing us into a family. And we have the opportunity as those that are created in the image of God to go out and image God, to go out and mirror God and mirror God's care for the orphan.

You and I were orphans.

You and I were those that were just left in the dirt, and yet God picked us up. And the Bible tells us in Ephesians 5:1, therefore be imitators of God as beloved children. We are beloved children because God adopted us and brought us into His family. James picks up this concept.

He says pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this to visit orphans, widows and their trouble and keep oneself unspotted from the world. You, you see throughout the Old Testament this concern that our God and our Father has for the orphan. Psalm 10:14, but you have seen, for you have you observed trouble and grief to repay it by your hand. The helpless commits himself to you.

You are the helper of the fatherless. This is one of the titles of God in the Old Testament is helper of the fatherless, and we are called as a church, as a family to image God. We are called as Cornerstone Fellowship Bible Church to look at what the Bible says about the character of God and then try to reflect his character in our church and in our community. And one of the ways that we can image God is by being those or being a church that adopts children.

God has adopted us into His family. And he is calling us to mirror Him in many different ways, but I believe, and I want to propose to you that one of the ways that he wants Cornerstone Fellowship Bible Church to image Him is by actually physically adopting children. There is great need in our world today. We have 130 million children who have lost one or both parents.

Every 18 seconds another child becomes an orphan without a mother or a father. Every 14 seconds a child loses a parent due to AIDS. Conflict has orphaned or separated 1 million children from their families in the 1990s or since the 1990s. There's 43 million orphans in Africa, 87 million orphans in Asia, 12 million orphans in Latin America.

The need is outstanding. We have 500,000 children in the US foster care system. Half a million kids in foster care, many of which will age out of the system with no mom or dad, with no dad to walk them down the aisle, no mother to help them on the course of life, no father to help them in career decisions. On average, children stay in foster care for about 2.5 years.

118,000 children were waiting to be adopted in September 2004. On average, those children waiting for adoption have been in foster care for 4 years. and when you look at just the outcome of those that come out of the foster care system. Only about 50% will earn a high school diploma.

About 50% will at least begin when they age out of the system unemployed. 1/3 of them will be uninsured. 25% of them will likely be homeless. 30% will receive public assistance.

there's lots and lots of needs all around the world, but in our own country as well. And we look at the dock of adoption, we look at how we can image God. It seems like it ought to be a Christian solution, and it has been for most of church history, even up to this day. There's a growing movement within the church to adopt children, and we can praise the Lord for that.

All over the world there are Christians that are adopting children, and yet there are those in our society that would say this is actually a cruel hoax. Alexander Sanger, who is the grandchild of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, says this, Adoption is counterintuitive from an evolutionary vantage point of both the biological mother and the adoptive parents. Adoption requires a person to devote time and resources to raising a child that is not genetically related.

Adoption puts the future of a child in the control of a stranger.

Evolution and biology conspire to thwart adoption. Evolution has programmed women to be nurtures of the children they bear. Adoption as the solution to the abortion problem is a cruel hoax. You have to hand it to him.

At least he's consistent with his worldview. From an evolutionary standpoint, what other conclusion could you come to? But from a biblical worldview standpoint, we must reject that. When we look at all of the children that will be in heaven, we're going to be with people from every tongue, every tribe, every nation.

And what, what, what counter evidence can we, what better counter evidence can we give to Darwinian evolution than to have churches that are made up of people from every tribe and every tongue and every nation? And that we realize that motherhood and fatherhood does not have to be just passing on your genetic material to the next generation so we can have a better and higher species. Being a mother and a father is not merely passing on our DNA. Being a mother and father is choosing to set your love upon a child that is born into a world naturally as a son of disobedience, naturally as a children of wrath, and yet you are bringing them into your home either by birth or by adoption to raise them to glorify God and to try to image the Heavenly Father in their lives.

I wanna challenge you there's there's not a whole lot that we can say about the particulars of adoption in this particular message, but I wanna challenge you to, to take a look at a book. That is, I think we should have it on our home page, a link to it we'll see. it's called Adopted for Life, and we have this book in our, bookstore and you can listen to it for free online at ChristianAudio.com. It's one of the free books of the month.

This is probably the best book I've ever read on the doctrine of adoption. It's probably the best book I've ever read on adoption in general. it's just a fantastic resource. If you're not a big reader, you can listen to the whole thing for free.

If you like the page, you can buy a copy at our info booth. I believe we still have some copies over there, but this book will talk about a lot of the things we've talked about this morning, but also get into some of the particulars. Not every single person should adopt. But I want to propose to you and hopefully as we hit the next series, every church should adopt, every church should try to image of God the Father by adopting children into their midst and trying to glorify God in that way.

Adoption is not just charity. Adoption is not a social issue that fits somewhere between gun control and a smaller government. Adoption is spiritual warfare. The devil knows what is at stake.

And God has gone out and He has imaged for us adoption by adopting us, and He calls us to image Him. Let me just end with this two statements. One, if you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ this morning. there is hope for you.

And that hope starts by realizing that you are not a child of God until you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. That hope starts by realizing that you are a child of the devil, and hopefully in understanding the predicament that you are in. And if you would come and repent of your sins and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be adopted into this family and you will have an eternal inheritance waiting for you. Let me say something to those that have been adopted in, in our cornerstone family.

You have come into your family through adoption. Realize that the way that you have come into your family is the way that God pictures all of us as coming into His family. And just as the Lord Jesus Christ was adopted by Joseph and protected by Joseph. You have been adopted by your parents, and you and your parents have a special way in which you can image the Lord, the Lord, the way that you can image the Father that is actually somewhat unique.

You can image the glory of God in a way that is unique from those that are natural born. And just as the Father has adopted us and promises never to leave us or to forsake us, He is calling upon your parents to image that and to never leave you or forsake you, and you have great confidence as being a Christian in this church, being in a Christian family. that God loves you. If you have been adopted by a mother and a father, that is a tremendous demonstration of God's love for you, that He would choose you and predestined that you would be brought in that family just as we have been predestined and chosen to come into the family of God at large.

You have great reason for hope, great reason for confidence in God's love for you, as he, as God has chosen to put you into a family that really images what God has done for all of us. Let's bow in prayer. Lord, we thank you so much for your goodness to us this day. We ask that You would fill us each with Your Spirit.

And we ask, Lord, that You would help us to gain confidence by this doctrine that we would understand our own adoption, what that means as far as our relationship with you and our relationship with our brothers and sisters. We pray, Lord, for those that don't know You, Lord, that they would not rest in ill-founded security, but that they would be convicted of your spirit to become children of God, that they would believe and become your children through adoption. We pray, Lord, for those in our church, that have been adopted, Lord, that you administer to them, that you bless their parents, and Lord, that you just, help them in the spiritual warfare, Lord, that they are participating in.

And we pray, Lord, that cornerstone more and more would reflect your image and become a church of adoption.

In Christ's name we pray. Amen.