The Spirit and Sonship Lifestyle

But behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. I love the greeting time part of our service. but let me invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to Romans. Chapter 8.

Romans chapter 8 for our time of study and the word this morning were Doing a study through Romans 567, and 8, a journey to the heart of the gospel. And as we continue in our study through this part of the book of Romans, we come, this morning to Romans chapter 8, verse 14, we'll be spending the bulk of our time in verse 15 and 16 and might be able to just step barely into verse 17, but we'll see how far, we get. If you want to give a title to the message, it would be the Spirit and the Sonship Lifestyle.

The spirit and the sonship lifestyle.

Just to give you a heads up, we are coming this morning, especially in verses 15 and 16, to a very tender portion of Romans 8. This is a soft spot in the heart of the apostle Paul, a very soft, tender spot in, in his theology. In fact, I don't think we would be off base to, we know later in Romans 16 that a guy named Tertius was writing down what Paul was speaking. So Paul is speaking this, these words and a scribe is writing them down.

and I, I think we would might maybe do well to imagine Paul speaking, what he's saying up to this point of Romans 8, but as he comes to verse 15, his pace slows and his lip begins to quiver, and it becomes very evident that there is great emotion and great passion in the heart of the apostle Paul for what he is saying. Almost he's getting choked up. As he speaks. All of us have had experiences of listening to a preacher or just anyone delivering a speech or sharing a testimony, and, and we might try to pay attention, and our minds might come and go, which may be already happening to you right now.

But then there's a point where the speaker pauses and you, you observe that they're getting choked up and then they begin to speak with great emotion and passion. And there's something about that that arrests your attention. And you become suddenly even more interested. What is this that obviously is moving this person in this way?

And that's essentially a good way of looking at verse 15 and 16. We have the Greek word here for cry, to cry out. We've got two exclamation points. At the end of verse 15.

We have a term of great endearment and affection, the word Abba that is used here. So great emotion. Passion on the part of the apostle Paul. In fact, I think we can, what we observe in verse 15 and 16, I think we can locate it very close to the very center or core of Paul's theology in terms of what it was that made this man tick.

In fact, we could also say that some of his reasonings and emotional exclamations that follow through the rest of this chapter emerge from this very hot core that we observe in verse 15 and 16. What we'll observe not only today, but in coming weeks is that a real understanding and a treasuring of our sonship, which is what Paul is talking about, in verse 15 and 16, our sonship in Jesus Christ being sons and daughters of God, a real understanding of this, and a treasuring of this reality is a powerful wellspring from which sanctification, flows.

And yet the truth is that though many of us in this room are children of God, we would all admit to many times being guilty of thinking like orphans. And acting like orphans.

I made reference a couple of weeks ago to a book From Fear to Freedom by Rose Marie Miller, who was a pastor's wife, and God had used her in a great way to be a blessing to many people, but when she reached midlife, she had a crisis where her self-righteousness began to crumble and cracks began to form and, and the things she would normally go to to, to cope, were not holding up like they once did. And when she found herself crumbling and in pressure situations where she was confused and bewildered, she, would collapse into an orphan mentality, even though she was a daughter of God.

Till one day her husband looked at her and said, Rosemarie, you act like an orphan. You often live as though the Holy Spirit never came.

You act as though there were no Father. Who loves you. We know he said this to her because she tells us in the book, her husband said this to her. And as she pondered this in various places of this book, here's one of the things that she realized, she said, Certainly, I grasped something of the meaning of free justification and adoption by faith.

I would have said, Yeah, I understand. I'm justified, and I understand that I am adopted. I am Daughter of God, I would have told you that I understood those things. And certainly I did grasp something of the meaning of these things.

But I had so many fears and insecurities that my capacity for approaching Christ's grace and power and daily affairs was limited. I was not yet able to use my standing as God's daughter, consistently as the power base for living in close partnership with God. What we observed from her language there is that the doctrine of her not only being justified, but being a daughter of God, that, that's not just a reality. That's not just theology.

that's a power base for living. And she would say, and she conveys in the book that she's, I'm in the beginning stages of beginning to understand this and then to live out of the good of this, and this is indeed a power base. For living And so what Paul's going to talk about in these verses here are very central to who we are in Christ. And it is this core from which God wants us to live.

Let me just begin reading in verse 14. We'll read through verse 17. And then I'll tell you how we'll break this down this morning. Paul says in verse 14, for all who are being led.

By the Spirit of God, these are sons of God, for 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. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children heirs, also heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. In verse 14 you'll notice, by the way, notice I tried to highlight this on the screen, the language of being a child and the spirit of God, sons of God, adoption of sons, Abba, Father, children of God.

Verse 17, children and running right through that same passage is the Spirit of God.

That's why we're titling this The Spirit and the Sonship Lifestyle. and we observe at the beginning of verse 14 that the Spirit of God is leading us. And Paul says, for all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. And when he says, being led by the Spirit of God, everyone agrees with the fact that Paul is not just speaking of the action of the Holy Spirit and leading us, but even us cooperating with him and allowing us to lead.

be led by him. What he's meaning by this is all who are being effectively led, successfully led, all who are allowing themselves to be effectively led by the Spirit of God, the Spirit is seeking to lead them, and he's succeeding and actually leading them, all who are being effectively led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. And we can observe two things there or infer two things. First, a theological fact.

Anyone over whose life the Spirit of God has dominance, anyone who's allowing the Spirit of God to lead them effectively, you can know something about them, a theological fact. Those are the sons of God. But there's also something that we can infer from this statement by Paul about the nature or the quality of the spirit's leadership. In our lives and what we can learn is that the Spirit does lead those who are sons of God.

And when he leads those who are sons of God, what he's doing is he's leading them in the ways of sonship. He's leading them to think and behave as sons. Let's reread verse 14. Let's read it this way for all who are being led effectively by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

You, anyone over whose life the Spirit has taken control, and he's effectively leading them, you will look at that person and come to the conclusion that person is a child of God, a Son of God, a daughter of God. And I know that because the way they think and the way they speak, the way they live their life, they're living as a son and daughter of God. I observed that they're living in the ways of sonship. And the Spirit of God evidently is leading them in a lifestyle of sonship.

Before God. And so he tells us here that the Spirit leads those who are sons of God, and He leads them in the ways of sonship and it raises the question, how does the Spirit lead children of God in the ways of sonship? And that's how we'll break our passage down today. We'll observe 6 ways that the Spirit of God leads us into the full experience of our sonship with God, 6 ways, and I'm pretty sure we're only going to get to 5 of them, but kids, don't worry.

If you don't get to fill in the 6th blank, you will get your candy. But we'll see how far we can get. He leads us. If you're a child of God, the Spirit is seeking to lead you and to lead you into the ways of sonship, the lifestyle of sonship.

And what does that look like? Well, let's, let's begin to learn. Number one, the first way that he leads us into the full enjoyment or experience of sonship before God is the Spirit leads us beyond a lifestyle of slavery. He leads us beyond a lifestyle of slavery.

Paul says in verse 15, for you have not received a spirit of slavery in receiving the Holy Spirit of God, you didn't receive a spirit of slavery. In other words, God didn't give you the Holy Spirit, so you can live your life as a slave. That raises the question, a slave to what? Slavery to what?

Well, we know at least he means slavery to sin. God did not give us a spirit to enable us to continue living in slavery to sin. In Romans 6:17, Paul says, you were slaves of sin before you were saved. Verse 20, you were slaves of sin.

Titus 3:3, we were once enslaved to various lust and pleasures. Before Christ saved us, we were in bondage to and enslaved to sin. We had to do sin's bidding, sin was our master, and we were sins slaves. And Paul would say to believers, things are different now.

God has freed you from sin. And he gave you his spirit so that you can walk in freedom from sin. He didn't give you a spirit so you can keep living in bondage to those same sins that you were in bondage to before you were saved. There's also another brand of slavery that's tied to this, but we can state it separately, and that is slavery to the law.

Paul uses this language earlier in Romans to indicate that there was an element of slavery to the law that we were once bound to. In chapter 7, verse 6, he says, but now we have been released from the law. So that we now serve as slaves. That's the Greek word, serve as slaves in the newness of the spirit, not in oldness of the letter, speaking of the Old Testament law.

And the law as we defined it back in Romans 7 is a system of blessings and cursings, a system of relationship with God based on performance, based on obedience, or Disobedience to where we can gain favor with God, gain relationship with God, receive blessing from God if we performed, and then once we obtained that favor, relationship, and blessing, in order to keep it, we had to keep performing. And because of the way that our inward sin rose up and And made misuse of the law.

The way we interacted with the law, it ended up becoming all about us and our performance rather than about God. So we were enslaved to sin and enslaved to the law, and Paul would say you didn't get from God a spirit of slavery.

In other words, God didn't give you the spirit so you can continue living, living in slavery to sin. And enslave to the law. I think there's one other element that Paul's trying to convey when he says that we have not received a spirit of slavery. and that is another form of slavery, and that is slavery to God, actually.

And please listen carefully to what I'm going to say here so that you don't misunderstand. Paul, actually tells us in Romans, we are slaves to God. He uses that language. Chapter 6, verse 22, he says, you've been freed from sin and enslaved to God.

So he's telling us, you are slaves to God. He even begins the book of Romans by saying, Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus. If you read the second half of Romans 6, you find this language everywhere where Paul is using the language of slavery. So indeed it is biblical.

One way of looking at our relationship to God is that he is now our master and we are his slaves. That is a totally biblical concept. However, part of what I think Paul is saying in this passage is if all you do is see yourself as a slave of God, he's your master, you're his slave. He gives the commands, you do what he says.

If that is the sum total of how you see your relationship with God, you're not allowing the Spirit to really lead you. To the fullness of the degree to which the Spirit is seeking to lead you. The Spirit wants to lead you through and even beyond seeing God only as your master and you only as a slave. He beckons you to something greater and deeper than that.

And that is, as we'll see, to seeing God as your Father, and you as God's Son and enjoying a relationship that is characterized, by this connection that you now have to God as your Father and you as his son, Paul is saying, God didn't give you the Holy Spirit simply so you can live your life as merely a slave of God. And that's the sum total of how you go about seeing God and seeing yourself and relating to Him. One writer on this very point in this very passage says this, if In our Christian lives, if we find ourselves always in our prayers saying Lord, Lord, and never Father, We should be concerned.

God did not give us the spirit so that we would only see God as master and only see ourselves as slaves.

But he gave us a spirit to take us beyond that to something that includes that, it embraces that, but also beckons us beyond that, to seeing God as Father and us as his children. I cannot look at this and ponder this in verse 15 without thinking of the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. You guys know the story where the son wanted his inheritance early and asked for that from his dad, and his dad gave it to him. He then left and went and squandered it on sinful living and ended up basically in the dumps feeding pigs and actually eating the food that the pigs were eating.

And he comes to his senses and realized that, what, my father's servants have it better than I have it right now. And so he says to himself, what, I'm going to go back to my father and I'm going to repent. I'm going to tell my father, and he rehearses his speech, I will go back to my father and I will say I've sinned against God. I've sinned against heaven, and I've sinned against you.

And here's what he intended to say I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired men. That was his speech. And he's like, what, he was going to go to his dad and say, Can I just come back home?

I don't even have to be your son anymore. And I'm totally fine with that. If you could just hire me to work for you, I will never call you dad. I will never expect you to call me son.

You just give me commands and tell me what to do, and I will serve you and do whatever you say. That was the relationship that he had envisioned with this one who was once in his own mind, his dad, and he would have been fine with that setup. But he then returns to his father and his father sees him from a distance and runs to his son and begins hugging and kissing his son even before his son could get his rehearsed speech out of his mouth. But then the son does begin his speech and says, he said to his dad, he says, I've sinned against heaven.

I've sinned against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. And right there, the father interrupts him and begins barking out commands. Verse 22, and the father said to his slaves quickly, Bring out the best robe.

Whose robe is that? That's his robe. This robe belonged to him. Bring out my very best robe.

I want my son clothed in my very best and finest robe, and put it on him and put a ring on his hand that was the symbol of sonship restored and sandals on his feet and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again. Isn't that awesome. if God would have saved us, forgiven us, justified us, and said from here on out you're my slave and I'm your master, and that's as good as it's going to get, we would have spent all eternity praising Him for His grace.

Amen.

But God has something even grander that he dreams about, and that is, I want to be your father. I want you to be my child, and I want us to have a very deep abiding relationship with each other. And this is so fantastic and so amazing that you, even if I made it available, you would never dare venture into this. On your own.

So I'm not only saving you and making this available to you, I'm now giving you my Holy Spirit, who will open your eyes to the glory of these things, and to help you to see with increasing clarity, the meaning of what I provided for you as your father and making you my child, and to coach you into this father-son relationship that I want us to enjoy with each other. God has not given us a spirit, the spirit of God merely so we could be slaves of sin, slaves to the world. Slaves to the law and even merely slaves to God, but so that we could experience something far higher and more glorious.

There's a second way that the Spirit leads us into the enjoyment and experience of sonship before God, and that is the Spirit leads us away from a lifestyle controlled by fear.

That's got to be dealt with. If we're going to experience real sonship with God, our fear issues have to be addressed. And so Paul says, you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again. Literally, you've not received a spirit of slavery into fear.

In other words, that takes you into fear, into a lifestyle that is controlled by fear. God does not want us as His children to live lives that are controlled by fear. And so he gave us a spirit to lead us beyond and out of that. There's so much we can ponder about what the fear is that Paul is talking about.

One writer says at the very least it speaks of the slavish dread of punishment, and certainly that's a big part of it, the fear of God's wrath. Having been saved by God, we no longer have to fear His wrath because God's wrath that we deserve for our sins, every bit of it fell upon Jesus Christ at the cross, to where there's not even 1% of God's wrath left over for us to bear. As believers, as his children. So when we think ahead to Judgment Day, we're not afraid.

We're not afraid that we're going to get his wrath because that fell upon Christ. And even now at the present time, we're not living in dread of God's wrath. In First John 4:18, John says fear involves punishment. And the one who fears is not being perfected in love.

God has given us His spirit to lead us out of a lifestyle that is governed by a fear of His wrath. God gets no pleasure out of seeing us quivering in fear over the prospect of His wrath. This word fear though is bigger than just fearing God's wrath. It, it can include the idea of suspicion, fear of God in the sense of being scared of God, scared away from God.

Oswald Chambers says man is incurably suspicious of God, and we all see abundant evidence of that in our world, in the lives of people, and even in our own hearts as well. This is a synonym for distrust. Not trusting God. God is asking us to hand over something to Him, and we're afraid to hand it over because we don't trust Him.

We're not sure that we're going to be OK. God wants us to release hold of some particular sin, and we clutch onto it. We're afraid to really let it go because will we really be OK if we never had this sin? Again, and so we hold on to it or we may let it go, but we try to keep it handy in case we want to go back because we just can't imagine that we'll really be OK without this PET sin.

Anxiety. is a part of the idea of fear. Being anxious, worrying, brooding over things as if there were no God who loved us. and cared for us.

And who invites us to cast our anxieties upon him. I have found in my own life that most of the time that I'm feeling anxious, it's not because I don't trust God's ability to handle a situation. I tend to feel anxious in those moments where I refuse to hand something over to him, not because I don't think he can handle it, but because I'm not sure I'm going to agree with the way he will handle it. And so I'll hold on to it, and if I, instead of giving that to God and letting him be God and me just be Milton, if I hold on to that because I'm not sure I'm going to agree with the way he's going to handle it, I put myself in that position of junior God.

And it wears me out. God can be God without developing an ulcer. I can't play in that role without developing an ulcer and falling apart. The Spirit has been given to us to, to day by day.

This is not like an instant thing, but we, we see the heart of God. God wants us to live a life that is free of fear of his wrath, and that is free of suspicion, a distrustful suspicion of him, and anxiety, and also the an element of timidity is embodied in the idea of fear. God didn't give us a spirit so we could be timid and uncertain. And we just, shrink into his presence and we're not sure we really belong and we might pray occasionally, but we just ask for small things and we're real timid.

In fact, by the way, if you see yourself only as a slave and God only as your master, you're going to be very timid before Him in terms of what you might ever ask from Him. There's only some things that a slave would ever be willing to ask of his master, right?, can a slave go to his master and say, hey, I need a hug? They don't do that, but a child can go to his Dad, and, and do that. God wants us to be bold and, and courageous, and to be daring and to, to come into his presence and really lay hold of what he's given to us.

And he's like, you're never going to do this on your own, even though I provided it, and I've saved you. You need my spirit, who will be your life coach. be inside of you, and he will help you to realize with increasing clarity, the meaning of, of our father-son relationship and all the rights and privileges and blessings that go along with that. And he will lead you deeper into this relationship that I saved you for.

Another element of fear that God has given us a spirit to lead us out of is a fear of rejection from God, a fear of disillusioning God and God saying that's it. I'm done I've had it with you. And when we're not secure in God's love, and we fear that rejection from God, when we fear that God quitting on us, it leads us to a place where we fear exposure, and we are afraid of facing up to our sin. We just don't want to go there.

there are some people, even in the church that, that they're afraid to really look honestly and squarely at their sin and fully own it and take 100% responsibility for it without putting blame on anyone else. They're afraid to do that because they don't know how to do that without immediately experiencing condemnation. But people that are truly secure in the love of God. It's like, God loves me.

You think about it, guys. The worst thing any of us ever did in this room is we killed Jesus. With our sins. That's the worst deed that any of us have ever committed.

And yet in that location where we committed our worst deed, God embraced us, and he loved us, and He forgave us, and he justified us. And he said, I'm going to make you my son, I'm going to make you my daughter and bring you into relationship with me. You already know the worst thing there is to know about me. The most shameful thing I've ever done.

Every one of you in this room knows that. We've all been outed by the cross, exposed by the cross, and we all ought to be feeling. Like, what is there really left to hide? I would love in the culture of Cornerstone for there to be This openness that comes from the realization that we've all already been exposed by the cross.

The worst about us has already been blared from Golgotha's hill where Christ was crucified, but also An openness and transparency and a freedom that comes from the absolutely certain knowledge that God loves me. And he will not reject me. And in the arms of my God, secure in his acceptance, no matter what, I now have the courage to go to my sin and be honest about it. And look at it squarely.

Rosemarie Miller in her book From Fear to Freedom says, I believe it is impossible to face your hurts and hidden sins without the knowledge that God loves you. People that are not secure in God's love, they try to run ahead of their sin. They try to distract themselves away from their sin. They can't look at their sin.

They can't bear to look at it because they instantly feel condemnation. And then when they are forced to look at it squarely, they immediately begin to blame shift and cast the blame off on other people. Because they can't stand looking at their sin. Because they don't know how to do that without at the same time feeling rejection from God.

All of us have grown up in different kinds of family backgrounds where maybe anytime you did do something wrong, that amounted to rejection from a parent or from family or from, from other people. And so it's easy to project that onto God, but God's like, I, I dream of so much better for you. And in our father-son relationship, I love you. That is rock solid.

That is certain. And that ought to give us the courage and the freedom to say, OK, OK, I can, I can be honest, I can face up to my sin. But a lifestyle of fear of God's wrath and suspicion of God, anxiety, timidity, and fear of rejection from, from God. Let me tell you something.

If your life, even if your Christian life is being fueled by these things, you're not going to get anywhere. These things do not produce holiness. Horatius Bonar said this a number of years ago. Terror accomplishes no real obedience.

Suspense brings forth no fruit unto holiness. No gloomy uncertainty as to God's favor can subdue one lust or correct our crookedness of the will. Terror, suspense, gloomy uncertainty. They're all synonyms for fear.

These things cannot produce holiness. And God has given you his spirit in order to lead you away from and beyond a life that is governed by terror, suspense, and a gloomy uncertainty. What can correct our crookedness of will? Look at this.

But the free pardon of the cross uproots sin and withers all its branches. Only the certainty of love, forgiving love, can do this. You're a child of God, no matter how messed up you are. What's in your past?

What's in your present. You are God's child and he loves you, and he already knows the absolute worst that there is to know about you, and he embraces you. as his son or as his daughter. The Spirit leads us.

Beyond a life of slavery, the spirit leads us away from a lifestyle controlled by fear. There's a 3rd thing that the Spirit does to lead us into the fullness of our sonship before God, and that is the Spirit leads us to embrace our status as adopted sons of God. The Spirit leads us to embrace our status as adopted sons of God. Paul says, but you, in contrast, have actually received a spirit of adoption as sons, by which we cry out, Abba, Father, you've received a spirit of adoption.

Implied in this is that one of the things God did for us when he saved us is he adopted us and made us His children. And then he didn't just do that. He gave us the Spirit who is called the Spirit of adoption, meaning a significant part of the role that the Holy Spirit plays in our life is to unpack what it means for us to be sons and daughters of God. And to show us with increasing clarity day by day, what is the meaning of this father-son relationship that we have with, with God.

He's a spirit of adoption. This is so daring, this is so bold that we would ever be able to enjoy this relationship with God, that God knew we would never presume upon this on our own. So he gives us the Spirit to lead us into this day by day. Galatians chapter 4 verse 6, Paul uses similar language.

He says, because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father, The spirit's role is to show us these things. A number of years ago, we got a new copier. It's the one we still have. And when we got the copier, this thing at the time really impressed us, had a lot of bells and whistles and not even totally sure how to make use of all of the features that it, it boasted.

but the cool thing is the company that gave us the copier, they didn't just drop it off. they did drop it off, but then they made an appointment with all of the staff, everyone in the office, and they, they walked us through. We had a training session where they said, here's all the things that this machine can, can do, and tutored us, discipled us. This company didn't just give us a copier, it gave us a person to tutor us and how to make use of all that it could do.

And that's what God has done. He didn't just save us and make us His children. He gave us His Holy Spirit to tutor us, and to bring us into the fullness of what God has in fact, provided for us in Christ. He's a spirit of adoption.

His role is to train us in the ways of adoption. What is this reality of adoption? Let me read this from the Westminster Confession of Faith, or at least the longer catechism tied to that. Look at this description of, of adoption that sweeps together the teaching of the New Testament on this subject.

Adoption is an act of the free grace of God in and for His only Son Jesus Christ, whereby all those that are justified are received into the number of his children. Have his name put upon them, the Spirit of His Son given to them, are under His fatherly care and dispensations, admitted to all the liberties and privileges of sons of God and made heirs of all the promises and fellow heirs of Christ in glory. There is a ton that is just inside this reality of us being adopted as children of God.

And the spirit is the spirit of adoption.

one of the things that this language indicates is that in calling him the spirit of adoption, what that indicates is that it's not just, the spirit has 100 things to do in our lives, and one of them has to do with this adoption thing. He does that, but then there's other things totally disconnected from that. Know that he would be called the spirit of adoption. indicates that that reality colors everything that the Holy Spirit does in our lives in every way, shape, and form.

Everything plays into this. Everything is a part of the Spirit's agenda to bring us deeper into the realization of and the experience of this relationship, this. Father child relationship that God longs to have with us. God didn't just save us so we can go to heaven.

He didn't just save us so we could have our sins forgiven. He didn't just save us so we would be justified. He didn't just save us so that we could be holy. He saved us because he wanted a relationship with us.

He wants to be our father. And for us to be as children and relate to him so, which leads to a 4th way that the Spirit leads us into the experience of the fullness of our sonship. And that is the Spirit enables us to cry out, Abba, Father. The Spirit enables us to cry out.

Abba, Father, again this is cry out. This is an exclamation. That's why you see an exclamation point after Abba and Father. The word the English word father is a translation of the normal Greek word for father, and then the word Abba is a transliteration of the Aramaic word.

Get ready to write this down. the Aramaic word Abba. OK. actually, this is an Aramaic word.

So if you can just say Abba, you can speak. Aramaic, OK. you can impress people with your Aramaic skills. in the culture of this day, Jewish culture of this day, Abba tended to be the more familiar address to one's, father.

Some have suggested that our English word dad. would be appropriate. Daddy would be appropriate, and I wouldn't argue against that, at all. Abba, Father, he's our father, and then, yeah, there's fathers and, and there's good fathers and bad fathers.

There's distant fathers and close fathers. God is our father, but he's not a distant father. He's Abba, Father. He's our dad.

It's our dad. what, what is conveyed, especially by the use of Abba and the fact that we cry out and it's exclamation points. Let me try to sweep a bunch of stuff together. this expression denotes affection.

We have affection for, for God. He's Abba, he's dad, that conveys affection. It conveys confidence. When a dad comes home after being away for a while and the children come bounding out of the house and they're like, Dad, they're, they're definitely excited, but there's also, as they're running to their dad and they're going to jump in the air and know he's going to catch them, there's tremendous confidence there.

The last thing on that child's mind is, I wonder if when I actually get to my dad if he will reject me. So I don't know if I should run out. I'm happy to see him, but will he reject me or not? I don't know.

No, there's confidence. There's closeness. This is not the language of a distant relationship. There's endearment here.

This is an expression of endearment. One writer suggests the translation Dear Father, not just father, but Dear Father. And there's familiarity here as well if we understand that in the most respectful of ways. One writer suggested that we, we're on a first name basis with the God of the universe.

This is the God who the Jews would not even pronounce his name. And we call him Dad. That's our dad. There's emotion.

There's passion. This is an exclamation. This is not coming up, not us coming up to God saying, hello, Abba. No, this is, this is a heart cry.

And exclamation. In what settings? Create your own settings. God would say, God wouldn't say, Oh, I only want you saying Abba Father in this setting when you're in trouble or suffering.

God wants this in every setting. Think about it. This, this cry Abba, Father is something that we cry out and say in a moment of admiration when we're beholding God, and His ways. When we're reading Scripture, and we see something that God has done in history or, or something.

has done in creation or we're looking at the stars or we're reading a science book and reading about the universe and how massive it is and then to know that God measured the entire universe with merely the span of His hand. There are so many moments where we ought to just be admiring God and just stop and say, Dad. Wow, that's That's my father. Dad, you're amazing.

We also cry this out whenever he blesses us, any good thing in life, any blessing large and, and blessing small, and sometimes it's the small blessings that mean the most, the little touches from God that, that we don't just receive blessing carelessly and, and thoughtlessly. No, every blessing that we receive our thought is dead. Dad, Father, this is from you. When food is set in front of us.

We know this is, we deserve hell, but instead we get this meal and our heart says, Dad. Dad, Father, thank you. When you turn on your air conditioner in your car. you ought to be, Dad, this is, you're so good.

You are so good. This is a blessing from, from you. I deserve hell, but instead I have temperature control in my car. Also, we cry out to Him in our moments of pain when we are hurting.

That's when we come to him and say, Father, Abba, Dad. God wants us to run to Him in our moments of pain. Also crying out to him, when we have needs, we see a need in our life. I know for me, when I see a need in my life, the first place I tend to go is, what do I need to do to take care of this?

And then after all of my efforts have failed, then I think about my Heavenly Father. That's my natural tendency that I have to fight against. But whenever there is any need, large or small, our heart says, Dad. Father, he's the first that we go to.

And we bring that, we make that a part of our relationship, crying out to Him whenever we are tempted. That's exactly what Christ did in the Garden of Gethsemane in Mark 14. In his moment of sore temptation, being pained to the point of death, he collapses to the ground in the Garden of Gethsemane and says, Abba, Father. And he prays to his father in his moment of pain and need and temptation.

And then also we cry out, Abba, Father. On behalf of other people when we're trying to parent our children and we see a whole lot of mess and it's like, I can't get into my child's heart. I can't produce change. Change will never happen if God doesn't show up, and I'm overwhelmed by my calling and the lives of my children and my family because I can't do this.

God must do this. And so whenever we're faced with ministry or calling in the lives of other people, Our exclamation is, Dad, Dad, Father, Father, I need you. God is saying, I want to be a part of every moment of your life. I saved you so that I could be your dad, and you could be my child.

And I don't want to just be your dad. I want to blow you away with the dad that I am to you. I, I want to so love you and take care of you. That you are exclaiming, Abba, Father, you're amazing.

You're amazing. This is what God saved us for. And the Spirit. Look at this, you have not received the spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you've received a spirit of adoption as sons, by which or by whom we cry out, Abba, Father, it's the Spirit who whenever we come to God in any of these moments I've just described, and we're like, Dad, Abba, Father, we do that by the power of the Spirit.

It's the Spirit who brought us to that moment. The Spirit, as it were, is the matchmaker. And his passion, his calling is to bring us together with our Father in all of such moments. And when we are brought together and when we cry out Abba Father in one form or another, the Spirit's like, this is, this is it.

This is, this is what I have been coaching this child. Towards. There's a 5th and final thing we'll look at, and like I said, we won't get to the 6th, but We've got to end on this note at least, and that is that the spirit communicates God's affirmation. In return, we come to God saying, Abba, Father, is that where it ends?

Abba Father. And then there's silence. no, the Spirit not only empowers us to say Abba Father, but in that moment the Spirit communicates God's affirmation that we are His children. He says, You've not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear, but you've received a spirit of adoption of sons by whom we cry out Abba Father.

And here's how some suggest translating this. When we cry out Abba, Father, the Spiritself test. with our spirit that we are children of God. In those moments when we are crying out Abba, Father, we do that by the power of the Spirit.

Does the Father respond? Yes, he does respond. And that response from the Father is mediated through the Holy Spirit. As the Spirit resoundingly testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, it's almost like we come to God, Abba, Father, the Father responds, my child, and he mediates that response in our own spirits.

Our spirits hear that and experience that and feel that. Because the spirit mediates that fatherly response. I Even this week, trying to live in the good of this and getting up in the morning and before my feet touch the floor, just, I'm a child of God. God is my dad, God is my father.

There's something about saying that, that, that there's, there's a leaping inside of me. It's a spirit leaping. The spirit rejoices when, when we come to God on those terms, and there's a reciprocation, there's a response from, from God. God has saved us for relationship.

Let me just close with this, this quote from JI Packer in Knowing God. He says, do I, as a Christian, understand myself? Do I know my own real identity, my own real destiny? Here it is.

I am a child of God. God is my Father, Heaven is my home. Every day is one day nearer. My savior is my brother, every Christian is my brother too.

Say it over and over to yourself, first thing in the morning, last thing at night, as you wait for the bus, anytime when your mind is free, and ask that you may be enabled to live as one who knows it all utterly and completely true. For this is the Christian secret of a God honoring life and may this secret be fully yours. And fully mine. Let's pray together If you're here today and you've never put your trust in Christ and come to This one who is willing to be a father in this way to all those Who believe in Christ, please do so today.

May God grant you repentance and faith to believe. If you call upon Him to be your Lord and Savior, God will save you. He will forgive you. He will make you righteous instantly in His sight.

He will make you his child, adopting you into his family, and He will give you the Holy Spirit. To help you beginning this journey today. To learn the ways of sonship, how to be a son and a daughter. of God Those of us that know Christ, there's a lot of orphan thinking going on.

In my own mind and in the minds of many. May we allow the Spirit to do what God gave us the Spirit to do, and that is to lead us away from slavery. To lead us away from unhealthy fears. And To take us into the full realization of who we are.

As sons and daughters of God. Crying out to Him, Abba, Father, in our moments of pain, in our moments of anxiety. In our moments Where we have great need in our moments of temptation and our moments where we're lost and bewildered and we have no answers, but we still cry out, Abba, Father. Coming to him in our moments of greatest weakness.

God delights in that. He doesn't say shame on you for being so weak and troubled. No, he delights, the spirit leaps inside of you when you come to God and all that weakness and all that mess and claim him as your father. Father, we thank you for your grace.

The gospel is big. It's massive. It's mighty, and we're just learning. every week, new aspects of this, this incredible gospel help us to think big and to live in the good of what you have provided for us and enjoy our relationship with you as your sons and daughters.

We thank you also, Lord, for the privilege of giving of our offerings to you at this time in our service, and we ask, Lord, that You would receive these funds and do much with them for the glory of Jesus. At the same time, we give ourselves to you in the name of Jesus, and all God's people said,