[00:00:01] Welcome to the River Church podcast. We're all about bringing the life, hope and love of Jesus to everyone around us. For more information, check out our
[email protected] philosophy. In philosophy, there are two fundamental questions. And by philosophy, I just mean it's the study of, like, the questions of life, the universe and everything, if we put it in terms of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
[00:00:28] But. But yeah, there's two fundamental questions.
[00:00:32] One is, where are we?
[00:00:36] What is this universe? What is this place that we live in? What is Earth? What is it all made up of?
[00:00:42] So the study of the things and of how it's constituted and how we might interact with the world. And how do we know the world?
[00:00:50] That's the first question.
[00:00:52] But the second question is, who am I?
[00:00:55] What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be alive?
[00:00:59] How do I understand what being alive is?
[00:01:04] And that second question, I think, is one that is really a focus of our culture at the moment. This thing of identity.
[00:01:13] Who am I? What am I supposed to do in this world? You might have heard me talk about it before, because I think it's something that's captured our Western society and. And there's so much about it. So much about it.
[00:01:27] So we are trying to, you know, wrestle with this question, to desperately define who we are and our place in the world.
[00:01:36] Now, the Bible, I'm going to talk about the Bible this morning.
[00:01:41] You'll be pleased to know the Bible, I think, can help us here, actually. Rather than wrestling with identity in the world, the Bible gives us the answers to who. Who we are, gives us the answers to the meaning of life, our purpose.
[00:01:57] And so this morning I want to talk about one aspect of what we might call identity is that of sonship, or being children of God, being sons and daughters of God. I want to talk about that this morning. And to start with, I just want to sort of roll back and just think about what it is in the Old Testament. Just a few glimpses in the Old Testament and then look at a passage in Roman that I think helps us and will sort of describe what this whole thing about sonship and identity is all about.
[00:02:33] Okay, you still with me? Good. Okay, so sonship, just in the Old Testament, three quick things. Firstly, where does it appear? It first appears right at the beginning.
[00:02:46] So we don't hear it described of Adam straight away, but what happens is Adam has a child called Seth, and it says that Seth is made or formed in the likeness or image of Adam, which is really Interesting, because those words are used to describe how God makes Adam. Adam is created in a likeness or the image of God. And so there's something there about sonship. It's kind of inferred there, but it really comes out in Luke's Gospel where Luke traces this, this lineage of Jesus, you know, the genealogy of Jesus. And he traces back, Jesus is the son of Joseph, is the son of. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Misses out a few people.
[00:03:34] But he gets all the way to the end and says, enosh is the son of Seth, Seth is the son of Adam, Adam is the son of God.
[00:03:42] And so there's something there about not only just procreation, about, you know, form, about making a human, but also that they're made in the likeness or image of the person that has formed them. And so that's where it first comes out. It second comes out in covenant, language of covenant. You might know the story of Israel when Israel, when Moses is raised up and is trying to lead the people out of slavery of Egypt.
[00:04:15] And God tells Moses to say to Pharaoh, he says, this is what the Lord says. Israel is my firstborn son.
[00:04:24] And I told you, let my son go, that he may worship me.
[00:04:29] Which is really funny. He's just describing the whole of Israel as his son of God's son.
[00:04:36] And this is the whole thing about covenant, about God choosing a people to. To be his own. And a language of sonship appears there.
[00:04:46] And then lastly, it sort of carries on. I'm doing a major skip through thousands of pages. But lastly, it also comes up in terms of particular individual people and just not the ones that you might have expected, but actually comes out of David, King David, he seems to be someone that knows God as father. So when he writes in the Psalms, he. He writes as God as his father, not only Lord God, but his father. And then we see some of the language in some of the Psalms talking about a future son, that a future son might come out.
[00:05:26] Psalm 2 says, you are my son today I have become your father. Ask me and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth, your possession. And so this son is someone that brings about the blessing to all the nations, to bring the blessing of God to everyone.
[00:05:45] And famously that psalm is then used in the Gospels to obviously describe Jesus.
[00:05:52] So that's a little bit of background, a little bit that's in the Old Testament. But this whole thing of sonship really comes out in the Gospels, doesn't it?
[00:06:02] And Jesus comes along and, you know, Jesus isn't the only teacher. At the time of the Gospels, there's lots of rabbis, Jewish teachers who teach about it. But Jesus has a unique teaching style. He says some things that are really unique.
[00:06:19] And one of the things that he brings about is that the way he talks about God or refers to God, that the.
[00:06:28] The phrase that he uses most often, more than anything else, is Father.
[00:06:33] He talks about God as father. There's an episode when Jesus is young.
[00:06:39] There's an episode where his parents managed to leave him behind at the synagogue safeguarding. Alarm bells are ringing out all over the place here.
[00:06:49] And they go off searching for him. I assume that they've left him with family, you know, there's lots of people around. And anyway, safeguarding, but we won't talk about it, but.
[00:06:59] And they search him for him and they find him in the synagogue.
[00:07:03] And Luke records that Jesus says, and this is as a teenager, he says, why were you searching for me? Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?
[00:07:13] Jesus referring, don't know how Joseph felt at that point, but he's still referring to God as his Father. He relates to God as his Father, but then he tells us to do it as well, doesn't he?
[00:07:29] How does he tell us to pray?
[00:07:32] Our Father who art in heaven, he says his followers, Jesus followers, should relate to God as Father. And it comes out in John 20 where Jesus has died and he's risen again. He's in the garden, this new garden, this garden of new creation.
[00:07:55] I love the picture there. But Mary comes to find him and he says, you know, he says, I am Jesus.
[00:08:06] She recognizes him.
[00:08:08] And he gives Mary this command. He says, don't hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them I am ascending to my Father. And. And your father, my God and your God.
[00:08:25] Jesus says, God is my Father, but he is your Father also.
[00:08:32] Question is, what should that mean for us?
[00:08:36] How should that change the way we think? Maybe we act, behave? How should it change the way that, you know, I don't know, we relate to God in prison prayer or we relate to one another as brothers and sisters or family. How does it kind of say some things about, you know, how we should think about the future or how we should think about the world around us. I mean, it should say something, right?
[00:09:00] If it's so important for Jesus to do it himself, but also to tell us, it's recorded in the gospel so many times, if it's so important, how should it change us.
[00:09:12] So I would just want to talk about that here this morning because I think it's really encouraging. And I'm going to just work through a passage in Romans. So if you have your Bibles, it's great to follow along. In the Bible that you have, it's Romans 8.
[00:09:27] I'm going to be looking at a few verses from 9 and then skip some to 12 and 17. I'll put them on the screen as well. So if you don't have one, you can read along. I'll read from the niv, the New International Version, and then I'm going to break it down into three little sections after that. So let me read through.
[00:09:47] It's verse nine and then I'm going to jump down to verse 12.
[00:09:53] Paul's writing this letter to the Church in Rome. He says, you however, are not in the realm of the flesh, but are in the realm of the Spirit. If indeed the the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.
[00:10:10] And then down to verse 12. Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation, but it's not to the flesh to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.
[00:10:28] For those who are led by the Spirit who of God are children of God, the Spirit you receive does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again, rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship.
[00:10:45] And by him we cry, abba, Father.
[00:10:49] The Spirit Himself testifies with our Spirit that we are God's children.
[00:10:54] Now, if we are children, we are also, we are heirs, heirs of God and coheirs with Christ.
[00:11:00] If indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
[00:11:09] So I just want to break it down into three words.
[00:11:13] That of children, that of sons and daughters, and that of heirs.
[00:11:20] It brings out. Paul brings out this thing of saying we are children of God and by him talks about the Spirit a lot in here. By him we cry out abba. Father Paul teaches this twice, both in this letter, here in Romans and in Galatians. And he says, to be in Christ is to have God's Spirit put in us.
[00:11:43] Spirit, you have received. It's a pasting.
[00:11:47] It's not we are waiting for it, or it's come in. You have received the Spirit of God. It's already in you. And one of the things that Spirit of God does in us is to bear witness that we are children of God.
[00:12:03] It's really strange.
[00:12:04] I find it. How does the Spirit testify that we are children of God? It says, by the way, that through him or by him, he calls out or we cry out, abba, father.
[00:12:19] Now, if you've not heard this before, abba, it's like, why is the word abba there?
[00:12:25] It's not referencing some Swedish pop group.
[00:12:31] Paul is writing in Greek or New Testament Greek at the time.
[00:12:36] So a father is pater. It's the Greek word there. But they've left this other word here, abba.
[00:12:42] And it's left there because it's Aramaic. It's not the same language as the rest of the letter that is writing there.
[00:12:49] And it just means father.
[00:12:52] So he's saying father, Father. Essentially, you might have heard, and some people have referenced that. Hey, this is a term that Jewish little boys would use. It's a childish term for calling their daddy, shall we say? Let's say that.
[00:13:10] But actually, that's not entirely true. It's somewhat true, but adults would use it of their own fathers as well. So it's still a respectful term. It's not like a childish term. It's still respectful.
[00:13:23] But aside from Paul, the only other time that we see this in the New Testament is in the words of Jesus, in the mouth of Jesus in Mark's Gospel.
[00:13:32] And Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane. I can't say it today. He's in the garden of Gethsemane. He's before, just about before. He's about to be arrested and taken for crucifixion. And Jesus knows what's going to happen.
[00:13:50] He knows. He's been walking this for a while. And he knows that the future is a lot of pain, a lot of sacrifice. He's deeply stressed. He's troubled about it. It says that his sweat is like drops of blood around.
[00:14:05] And he cries out and he says, abba, father, all things are possible for. For you remove this cup from me yet. Not what I will, but what you will.
[00:14:16] And I think Paul here is obviously referencing this.
[00:14:20] He's referencing Jesus phrase here.
[00:14:24] Paul's writing in the late. I think this is the late first century. Mark's gospel is one of the very earliest to be published. And so Paul is referencing this and the way that Jesus is talking to God.
[00:14:39] Now. You might have heard this wrapped up in a word called intimacy.
[00:14:44] I don't know what that word means to you right now. It means lots of different things, doesn't it?
[00:14:51] In different circumstances, you know, underwear is described as intimate, isn't it? But most often, if you talk about an intimate relationship, it's probably referred to a sexual relationship of some kind.
[00:15:05] But the thing is intimacy, that the root isn't there. The root just means openness.
[00:15:12] It means a closeness. It means high trust, it means walking with someone. Connection.
[00:15:21] And Jesus having intimacy with the Father conveys this sense of closeness.
[00:15:28] Jesus is able to open up and talk to God and relate to God and share what's going on in his life.
[00:15:37] There's nothing in the way. There's no barriers. There's no distance. Jesus is close to the Father. He can talk to the Father about everything that's going on. Everything and anything, any time of day and night. Jesus has access to the Father. And Paul is saying, hey, by the Spirit, do you know? By the Spirit that is deposited in you, in you already.
[00:16:07] We cry out, abba, Father.
[00:16:11] We gain closeness to God through the Spirit because we are children.
[00:16:18] Tim Keller writes about this, and he says the Spirit give believers an existential inward certainty that their relationship with God does now not depend on their performance.
[00:16:30] It depends only on parental love, on God's love. The Holy Spirit takes a theological proposition and turns it into inner confidence and joy.
[00:16:42] You know that God responds to your cry with the intense love and care of a parent responding to the cry of pain of his or her child. A child, because you are in Jesus, the true Son.
[00:16:57] We are in Jesus.
[00:17:00] And perhaps, hey, perhaps you're not feeling that right now.
[00:17:04] Do you know, we all go through stages where we feel distant from God, where maybe we feel that there are barriers up there.
[00:17:13] What do we do if we struggle?
[00:17:15] Well, firstly, we remember that God, God himself wants this intimate, this close relationship with you.
[00:17:24] It's not like you're having to fight him, not like you're having to do performance, you know, do something. He wants it with you. He's eager to have you close to him.
[00:17:36] But secondly, to know the Holy Spirit, he works in us over time. He's not someone that comes in and just completely transforms our thoughts and our behaviors overnight.
[00:17:48] Hey, he works in us day by day, by day by day. So if you're struggling, if you think, hey, I really want that close, intimate relationship with God, I want to know what God's thinking. I want to be able to share stuff. Guess what?
[00:18:02] It will happen.
[00:18:05] Just take some time, give some time over to the Holy Spirit to work in your life day by day by day.
[00:18:14] And this intimate relationship, this closeness to God will grow and grow Great, so that's children, that's what I wanted to bring about, children. The second thing that I want to bring up is sons and daughters.
[00:18:28] And it says that brothers and sisters, we have an obligation to live according to the Spirit.
[00:18:37] It says for those who are led by the spirit of God are the children of God.
[00:18:43] Now right at the beginning I said something about Adam and Adam was made, he was called a son of God and he was made in the likeness of God.
[00:18:56] We might know this, you know, children, children are children of a parent, right? And it's really easy to think about likeness in terms of physical attributes, isn't it? You know, you might see a newborn baby, well, not quite newborn, a little bit older.
[00:19:12] And we say, don't we, we pick out characteristics, don't we? They've got your eyes or your nose or something. Hopefully it's, you know, complementary in that respect, isn't it? But we talk about physical characteristics, children adopt, have the physical characteristics of adults. But there's much more. Do you know when we're parents that I wonder if you've ever had this moment as a child growing up and suddenly they say something that's kind of really bizarre or kind of like that's weird.
[00:19:52] They might say something about, I don't know, politics or other drivers or something really weird. And you think that's, that's not, where did you get that from? And you think, oh, I'm just about to tell them off and then you realize, oh no, they got it from you.
[00:20:09] Do you know this strange saying?
[00:20:11] And they got it from you. And that's really this thing about child development, this age old question, where did it come from? Is it nature or is it nurture? Is it genetic code or is it learnt behavior?
[00:20:27] And it's interesting because the Bible writers use both of these analogies to show how we are children, sons and daughters of God.
[00:20:35] So John writes in his letter, he says no one who is born of God will continue to sin because God's seed remains in them.
[00:20:44] They cannot go on sin because they are born of God.
[00:20:49] This is how we know children of God are. Now just to clarify, John's not talking about getting into, you know, we all sin, we all still make mistakes. He's talking about perpetual living in a life of continued sin and repeating things again and again. And he says, hey, we don't do that because we're born of God.
[00:21:12] God's genetic code is in us.
[00:21:16] It's running, you know, his blood is running through our veins, as it were.
[00:21:20] And so that Governs the way that we behave. We take on the likeness of God because we've been born of the Spirit.
[00:21:29] But also in the letter of Ephesians, the writer, which I think is Paul, he says, follow God's example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love. He's saying, be imitators, practice it.
[00:21:48] Come on, look at God and imitate him. Follow what he did, say what he said, do what he did.
[00:21:57] And it's something to practice.
[00:21:59] So we've both got that inward thing, that identity. That's something that we are genetically, you know, genetically modified. That's a bit of a strange way to think of it, isn't it? But we're born again in life in the Spirit. And spirit is working in us. But also we have to practice this, put it into practice to be imitators of God.
[00:22:22] And one of the ways in which we do this, in which we demonstrate we are followers of God, children of God, is as we endure through suffering.
[00:22:33] And at the end of the passage that we read out earlier, Paul writes that we get to share in the glory of Christ through the way that we share also in his suffering.
[00:22:47] The writer, it comes out more in the writer to the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, whoever those people are. And he tells us that God actually shapes us, changes us in suffering. And the way that we go through hard times, he says, endure hardship as discipline.
[00:23:09] God is treating you as children for what children are not disciplined by their father.
[00:23:16] And so one of the ways we get to imitate God, we get to be more like him, we get to behave more like him, is the way that we respond through suffering in hard times, in persecution, in just ill health or problems at work.
[00:23:35] That we don't see these as just things that we need to run away from, but actually that God is working through them. The spirit of God is working through them. Working in us to change us to be more like him. And that we can see these times as things that we can grow and change to be more like Him.
[00:23:56] So that's talked about children, talked about being sons and daughters. And lastly, I want to just, finally just talk about heirs.
[00:24:06] And Paul, at that last bit, he says, now, if you are children, we are then heirs. Heirs of God.
[00:24:14] Now, Paul, in this phrase, adoption, it's popular actually to talk about Paul and relating this to Greco, sort of Roman culture.
[00:24:25] Adoption is something done in Roman culture. I don't know if you heard about this.
[00:24:31] And it was common for people to adopt. Not that common, but common practice. At least for people to adopt someone, adopt a child.
[00:24:42] But, you know, when we adopt in our culture, it's about the child, it's about provision for the child, isn't it? So we've got some foster carers in this room, I think, or I know them in the church.
[00:24:55] And it's when a child have a parent as an orphan anymore or can't, or their parent can't look after them through whatever reason that we foster, we have a process of being able to foster, look after, temporary look after a child for the benefit of child. And hopefully there are times children will be adopted into a family. So someone who says, I'm going to look after and take responsibility for this child for the rest of its life, and that's all about the child.
[00:25:28] But in Roman culture, it wasn't about that, it was about succession.
[00:25:34] So Roman Empire, Roman emperors actually adopted children to have a successor.
[00:25:42] But funnily enough, this didn't occur when they were actually children. So Emperor Tiberius, who was the emperor at the time of Jesus, the start of Jesus life, adopted, sorry, Augustus, that's the one, adopted Tiberius. But when Augustus adopted Tiberius, Augustus was 66 and Tiberius was 45.
[00:26:06] It's not looking off. I mean, the whole thing of adoption was about succession and it was a legal process to bring someone into a succession. He is going to be the next emperor. And so I legally adopt him as my child.
[00:26:23] But when we look through Old Testament language, this adoption, God's bringing Israel as his children was more about God's covenantal love that he wanted to bring provision.
[00:26:40] God chose Israel not because they were worthy, they were a worthy, proven successor, but because God wanted to choose them and lavish his love upon them.
[00:26:53] God adopts us not because we are better than anyone else, but because he wants to lavish his love and grace upon us.
[00:27:04] And being adopted into God's family means that we are brought into a family that God has made promises over.
[00:27:12] Paul will talk here in Romans and also Galatians about us being adopted and being these heirs, but heirs to the promise and the promises that have been put over Abraham.
[00:27:24] We are children of Abraham and we are children of the promises made to Abraham. We have inherited the things that have been promised to Abraham.
[00:27:37] What were the things promised to Abraham?
[00:27:41] Lands, provision and security.
[00:27:46] Abraham was promised somewhere to live, things to eat, to live for his benefit and free from adversaries, free from war.
[00:28:00] He was to live in a place of peace. Shalom is the Hebrew word.
[00:28:07] And when we see, when we move into the New Testament, Jesus changes this Language and focuses on the kingdom of God and eternal life.
[00:28:18] Children of God, we are receivers of the promise that has been passed down through generation through generation, from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, through the Israelites, through David, through Solomon, through Jesus to us.
[00:28:40] Paul writes in Ephesians, when you believed you were marked in him with a seal. The promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession.
[00:28:56] You, we are inheritors.
[00:29:00] We don't see the fullness of that promise right now.
[00:29:05] There is a day when that promise will come in its fullness.
[00:29:11] That promise that says we will live a life in the fullness of the kingdom of God. Where there is no pain and suffering, where there is no persecution, no illness.
[00:29:25] Do you know, where we're not fearful of the future, where we're not scrabbling for provision and trying to work out what's going to happen.
[00:29:33] There is a day where we will be given this eternal life.
[00:29:39] And that's part of being children of God, of being heirs of the promise. This is something God wants us to know deeply, to be affected by it day by day by day.
[00:29:54] If the bands could come back up, we're going to in a minute, just finish with a song to sing out these promises. Sing about how great our Father is, who is in heaven, but who is close by us, because the Spirit is in us.
[00:30:13] We need to remember these three things, that we are children of God.
[00:30:18] And this means that we have access to the Father.
[00:30:22] It means that we can talk to Him.
[00:30:24] We have a close relationship, but also that as sons and daughters, God, we are born into being imitators, being in the likeness of God.
[00:30:35] That God is shaping us, shaping us as we walk through our life. He's changing us.
[00:30:42] But we should try and do that, work with him, know that he is close to us, but try and do that. But acknowledge also hold onto the security of the promise.
[00:30:54] That no matter what goes on in this life, we are children of heirs of the promise. The promise that has been passed down to us. And we can depend upon that and look to the future where all things are made.
[00:31:09] That all the promises of God are yes and amen, aren't they?
[00:31:15] So let's stand and let's just worship God, give our hearts to Him.
