Our text this evening, it's a short one. We're in Romans chapter 8, and we will be reading verses 14 through 17, and you can find that on page 1122. Hear now the word of our Lord. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. And thus ends the reading of the word. So in college, I played college baseball. It was a small Bible college, so it was nothing glamorous. But we were lucky enough to have a former professional player come and help us for a bit. Now, as this guy observed us, these fledgling small Bible college athletes playing, one of the things that he quipped to us was, you got to look good to feel good, and you got to feel good to play good. And then he shortened it to, you got to look good to play good. Now, this idea is somewhat close to, fake it till you make it. But the reality is, there was some truth to this. And while I can't say to a man if it resonated with everyone, I can say that there was a sense that our team took on this new identity and this new confidence, and we ended up having one of the best years ever in our school's history. We took this adopted attitude and identity that we were not a bad ball club, but a ball club that actually had potential. and that we had ability. What afterwards would happen with the school was actually that the baseball team got better and better years after I left. And so, for whatever reason, I don't know if this is the reason, but it seemed to serve as a launching point for the school baseball program. Not that that's what's most important at a Bible college, but nonetheless, we can hang our hats on that. However, I use this as an example because this is not completely unlike what Paul has said in this text here regarding the consequential reality of the gospel. When one comes to a saving faith in Christ, they are God's children. And as children, they are written into God's will as heirs. They are given this new identity to adopt. So as we go into this, there's three points that we want to focus on this evening. God's adopted are his children. Secondly, we want to look at how God's adopted are affirmed as his children. And then finally, that God's adopted are his heirs. So looking here again at verses 14 and 15. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father. To briefly orient us with this passage, in Romans 8, Paul has more or less been contrasting life in the Spirit and life in the flesh. As he's been doing this, he's also been seeking to draw out and plumb the depths of the rich mercy that comes with the gospel and the consequences of that life. So with our text here, who are the sons of God or who are the children of God? Well, plainly, we see that for all who are led by the spirit of God are sons of God. That's a very simple statement. but who are the ones that are being led by the Spirit? See, this is where it should cause us as we go through texts like this with statements that might be cliche to us as Christians and step back and slow down and think through it a little bit more. It's so easy for us to skip over it. It's easy to say, I'm led by the Spirit as a believer, but what does that entail? Well, what we see here is that being led by the Spirit means living obediently. The ones who are led by the Spirit are those who are living obediently. Now, you may recall when Wright exhorted a few weeks back, he actually handled the verses prior to this. Truth is, we were in school together, and so we were working through these texts together. But nonetheless, he talked about the sanctification that goes on. And this is just a furthering of what was discussed in that. So the ones who are living by the Spirit, they're the ones that are living obediently. Now, for us, it's very easy for us, especially if we're coming into the Reformed world from a more legalistic background, It's easy for us to almost have warning red flags come up in our mind. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Paul is getting into some sort of moralism here. He's turning this into something that has to deal with works. But that's not at all what he's doing. What he's simply trying to point out is the very real truth of being a believer and having the Holy Spirit leading us in our lives is that we are going to live differently. It is a natural consequence of having the Holy Spirit. As I mentioned earlier, Paul has been contrasting life according to the flesh and life with the Spirit. If we look back at verse 13, we see, For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. Note, if you die, if you live by your works of the flesh, you will die. now when someone dies they cease to be living they cease to have an active identity contrastingly those who live by the spirit they have eternal life if you're if you're alive you have an active identity you're a person who is alive you are in the case here of being led by the spirit you are a child of god now the other thing with being a child of god and being led by the spirit is understanding that we are not at the forefront see being led by someone is a passive thing someone else is doing the initial work that someone in this case being the spirit of the living god now this is not to deny that we have any sort of human responsibility but what a great truth it is to know that god did not just offer us this gospel and then say figure it out on your own he sent his son to die for our sins to rise again that we may know we have life and then his son sends the Holy Spirit to help guide us and conform us into the image of Christ. It's so much more than simply saying being led by the Spirit. There's so much attached to it. But with this also is another thing to understand. It doesn't say everyone is led by the Spirit. Calvin notes that in this verse, what we see is it's implicit that in being sons of God is the sanctification of the believer. Expanding on it more, it is the believers who have the privilege of being sanctified by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's operation of sanctifying someone is only for those who are children of God. If you have had children or you have any experience with children, you might understand this example of thinking about then being led by the Spirit. And understanding, too, that it's a process. You guide your child, you hold their hand, you're trying to get from point A to point B. And what happens with that child? More often than not, your point A to point B takes a very jaggedy path. in, out, in, out. You might go backwards. You might even go past point B and then come back. But that's not unlike our lives as Christians and lives being led by the Spirit. It's not a straight trip from point A to point B as we go through our sanctification. There is a progressive element to it. There will be really, really good times, and then there will be times that we decide to veer off, or we veer off and are just slightly off the beaten path and need corrected. But nonetheless, as children of God, the Spirit is there and constantly seeking to lead us. Now, it's more specifically, how does this show up in our lives? Think about any sort of sin you've had in the past and have worked through. Maybe it's a sin you're currently struggling with, but how did you develop that strength to fight through it or the strength to overcome that sin? Holy Spirit guiding you. Maybe it was a blind spot for you and it gets revealed to you through your study of Scripture. That's the Holy Spirit. As you meditate on the Word, that's the Holy Spirit. Maybe a brother or sister in the faith comes up to you privately to point out something that they're seeing because they're concerned for you out of Christian love. That's still the Holy Spirit at work, sanctifying. Or maybe it, as we read the Ten Commandments or the Law every morning on Lord's Days, maybe it's during that time. That's the Holy Spirit present with us and working in our hearts. Now, moving on to consider more of what it is to be a child of God is also to understand that you are set apart and you are identifiable. Consider Deuteronomy 14, 1-2. And this really hits home as we are looking at Joshua in the mornings here. But Deuteronomy 14, 1-2 says, You are the sons of the Lord your God. You shall not cut yourselves or make any baldness on your foreheads for the dead. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. And the Lord has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession. Out of all the peoples who are on earth. This being spoken to Israel on the cusp of when they would be entering into the promised land. But we can see that this applies to us. Again, tying into what we've been looking at in the last couple mornings. For you, believer, you are the sons and the daughters of the Lord, your God. And you are set apart. You are going to look differently. Calvin says specifically regarding this passage, he notes that as believers, you are marked as gods. See, what's going on in our nation with the Christian church is almost trying to avoid being marked as a Christian in some places. There's a problem with being different in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of a pagan world, a non-believing world. It's almost seen as a burden in some circles. But this is not a burden for us. This is part of the reality of being a child of God. This is not a matter of saying you have to live obediently by the Spirit. It's that you get to live obedient and be holy to the Lord. Again, it's a privilege that the Holy Spirit is working in your life and marking you apart from this world. Now, moving in specifically to verse 15, we see that those who are led by the Spirit are sons by adoption. They are given a spirit of adoption. But before that, Paul notes, you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. And so I think it's a good point here to consider what, when we receive the Holy Spirit, what it is not and then contrast it eventually with what it is so first believers we have not received a spirit of slavery and to sin and to fall back into that fear you were not adopted to continue on in sin as a slave your identity is not in your sinfulness Even if it's in the past and it's something that you have not done and you are out of. You were not given a spirit that consistently brings that up over and over again to gnaw at you. Now this reminder may not apply to everyone in this room at all times. But it is something that I would venture to guess each of us have dealt with at one point or another in our Christian lives. and oftentimes when we're in those moments what we have is we look in the mirror and all we see is our sin or our sinfulness and what happens is in those brief moments we tend to forget that we are a child of God typically there's one or two ways that this plays out so the first way that it often plays out in forgetting that you are a child of God is that it could be a person just does not even care to change. They struggle with a sin and giving in to temptation. They feel defined by that sin. The captivity that they have by the sin, they just don't see the use in fighting it. And in that, they are forgetting that they are God's child and they live as if they have a spirit of slavery over them, keeping them trained to that. Naturally, if you think about it, this slavery will lead someone into fear of death and judgment. For this slavery and fear is what begins to destroy the sense of assurance that comes with having the Holy Spirit. But we also note that in these cases, That's a trait that is common with non-believers. We think through it in the sense that non-believers, if you talk to them, one of the things they're very aware of is their shortcomings. And then they try to celebrate it. We see this in our post-Christian world more and more. People knowing that they're in sin, and yet they're clinging to it, and they're trying to identify themselves by it. to try and justify themselves in how they're living. They cling to temporal things. Maybe it's not even sin, but they put their identity in materialistic things. Their money, their job, what have you. Because that's all they have in this life. Forgetting, well not knowing in this case, that they are children of God. Romans 1 makes this very clear to us. That on some level, everyone knows this. Paul lays that out from the very beginning as in the well-known text of Romans 1. But we say, oh, they don't seem like they're fearful. But I submit that their fear is actually masked by what they're doing and how they're clinging to the various things of hedonism or their moral or justifying their moral lives. Now, the second way that someone may forget they're a child of God is probably more common with all of us. Is that oftentimes there's a struggle for us as believers with our standing before God. You yourself know the worst that's inside of you. You know the worst things that you've ever done. There might be a handful of people. There might be one person who knows as much as that. But you alone know your heart and your hearts. But you know who else knows that as a believer? God knows that. And God did not give you a spirit to keep thinking about that. To live in fear that while this gospel is great, that it somehow cannot possibly apply to you because of what you've done. and with that we shift to what it is to have the spirit of adoption that has been given to us a commentator noted that in the culture at that time these characteristics were true of someone who was adopted an adopted son quoting him here an adopted son one was taken out of his previous situation and placed in an entirely new relationship to his new adopting father. Number two, an adopted son started a new life as part of his new family with all his old debts canceled. Point three, an adopted son was considered no less important than any other biologically born son in his adopting father's family. And lastly, an adopted son experienced a change in status. with his old name set aside and a new name given him by his adopting father. Did you catch that? In our real world examples, our living world examples of adoption, the spiritual truths that actually come out there, we see that adoption is a legal thing. We see that it is binding. We see that there's elements of unconditional election, mercy and grace, love and unity. And in a sense, we see that there's a justification element that happens there. And so it is, when we receive the spirit of adoption, it is legal, it is binding. We know that we were unconditionally elected. We know that we have received mercy and grace. We have received love from the Father and unity with Christ. And we have received justification. Moving on in the text, Paul picks up on this very thought as he states that as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father, being adopted. Now, you've probably heard someone somewhere along the lines take the Abba Father line and point out to it meaning Daddy or something along those lines. But that's not the point that Paul's trying to make. It's not about the name. The point that Paul's trying to make is that this is a very personal thing. This is not God just coldly saying, they're saved, they're saved. There's a personal element to this, and he's inviting us. As we know, the Holy Spirit is inspiring these texts to be written when they were written. So God is very much wanting us to understand himself and his relationship to us. What we get here is understanding that God is not some distant father. He is close by. He cares about the ins and the outs of our days. You can cry out to Him because, again, you are privileged as a believer, not on anything you've done, but because of the Holy Spirit. Now, how personal is this? An example is my son, and some of you may have seen him running around with cookies in his hands in the morning. My son, Sammy, I'm the one chasing after him, by the way. My son Sammy, when he calls me daddy versus another child calling me daddy, except for his brother, which his brother can't right now, that has a whole other meaning in my life. In the same thought process, when Sammy calls me daddy and he wants my help versus another male figure, his heart's coming from a different place. There is this whole other level of trust that he has for me as he comes up to me. But so it is between us as believers and God our Father. When we go to him and we call him Father, that is purely for believers only. There are some Christians that want to believe that God is a universal Father to all. And yes, there is common grace elements where He is over everyone. But His fatherhood, as displayed here, is specifically for us as believers. And we can go to Him with an unabandoned and vulnerable sense, trusting that He is there for us. You see, closing up these thoughts on this part, by virtue of your adoption, fear and trepidation are gone. And you can boldly approach the throne of grace. You can cry out in your darkest nights. You can trust you are not on your own or alone. Moving to verse 16, we read, The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And what we see here is assurance. now if you're like me maybe you struggle with a sense of doubt doubt about your standing before god doubt about who god is really anything that's involved with the christian truth by nature i can say i'm someone that does have those issues where from time to time doubt just creeps up but maybe it's also just there's a season where Satan's really getting through. And the lies that he's telling you are getting through. But did you catch this here? God in his foresight knew that these kind of things were going to come up in the Christian life. That you were going to have those moments of doubts and fear. And so what did He do? Again, with the spirit of adoption, His Holy Spirit testifying itself to us that we are His children. It's as if God was safe-proofing us every step of the way in our journey as Christians. Lastly, we see that as God's adopted, we are also heirs. Picking up in verse 16. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs. Heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. Provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him. What are heirs and what are we inheriting is the question here. Well, an heir typically refers to some family member or a close friend who has been written into a will and that something will be passed down to them. Maybe it's something sentimental. Maybe it's something monetary. It doesn't matter, but there is an element that they are inheriting something. Well, we know that God will never die, but what we have here is in a sense that we are written into God's will. And if we're children, then we're heirs of God. It says it explicitly right there. But there's an even greater commonality that we find here. It says, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. Now, that can lead to possible dangers, and from the outset, we must acknowledge that Christ is over all. But, what we hear is that we have an equal share in eternity. We are fellow heirs with Him and that we will inherit the eternal kingdom. Now, a couple places in Scripture that note and talk about being an heir, we see in Hebrews 1 that Christ is the heir of all things. Naturally, what is entailed with that, with adoption, then indicates to us that there is some sort of element that we are also going to be heirs of all things. Again, we are not going to be over all things, but we are involved in that. Specifically for us, we are told in Scripture, in God's Word, that we are heirs, heirs of the promise, as seen in Galatians 3, in Hebrews 6. We're also called in Hebrews, heirs of righteousness. In James, we are called heirs of the kingdom. And in even Romans 4, we are called heirs of the world. These are not simple things. These were not just cool, cute phrases that Paul or the other apostles who were writing, or the other writers of these books were writing. These had intense intentions and were purposeful. They were to produce that hope that we could keep going and be reminders to us as we go through our Christian life. But also mentioned here, you'll notice, is this brief, almost but, comment. It says, Provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him. Suffering is part of our Christian identity. And from the outset, I'm not saying that we're supposed to go around and be beating ourselves over the head with a Bible. I'm not saying we are to seek out to live a miserable life. But what this does mean is that suffering will come at points in our Christian life. Now, in God's providence, I actually had this sermon written before I knew we were doing Joshua. But it's worked out these last two mornings where this ties in. I remember specifically last week, we talked about, Reverend Gordon talked about, how it was not going to be an easy journey into the land of Canaan. There was going to be struggling. It was going to be tense. for a little while before they hit that rest. This passage helps confirm what he's been saying and what God's Word has been saying the last couple of weekends that we've been here. See, the Christian life, you well know, is no cakewalk. So we will suffer with him. But it's easy for us to dismiss this and think, well, I've never been persecuted on a physical level, so I don't know if I've ever suffered with him. But we have and we do suffer. How do we do that? Well, yes, there is persecution, both physically and socially with mockery and the like. But we also suffer against our flesh and against the devil who seeks to tear away at our assurance and at our faith. Those are moments of suffering too. And as we struggle through those, as we suffer through those, we are in union with Christ as He suffered through many things. Lastly, we are told that then we will be glorified with Him. Being glorified, there's honor and dignity in the realization of our possessions. we, again, will be inheriting the kingdom of heaven. Now, to conclude, I've had an example that I want to share from before I came to California that I really felt hit this point. I had a student in my youth group. I was a youth pastor there. Sorry. i had a student when i was youth pastoring in maine and he was adopted by a family the family was was well-to-do and they were a christian family and he came and he was from a foreign country and he has since really just embraced being a part of that family he has their last name he lives as a normal sibling he does have biological or there are children who are biologically sons of his parents, but he is treated just the same and he gets just the same recognition. This young man, do you know where he's from though? He's from the Ukraine. Now think about this situation. Had he not been adopted, what would his life look like right now with what is going on in the world? but he was adopted out of a place that at times in the past, but really, especially right now, he was adopted out of a place that's essentially a living hell. It's a war zone right now. And he lives here in the comfort of the United States, loved and embraced by his family, getting opportunities that he would never have if he were still back in the Ukraine. He has that new identity. He was, out of nothing he did, they pulled him years ago out of the Ukraine. But as great as that story is, and that picture is, it pales in comparison to the glorious truth of what it means for us to be God's adopted and His children. We were plucked out of the darkness at some point along the way. And God said, you are mine. And he drew us close to himself. And yes, it's not always easy, whether it's by our struggles with sin or the suffering that we have. But we know that we are with him and that he has us and that his spirit is guiding us and we can be assured of the promises that we've been given in his word. Let's pray. Father God, what a joy and a privilege it is to be able to call you our Father. It's not a right or a prize or an identity that we earned in and of ourselves. But it was one that was earned for us by your Son, our co-heir, Jesus Christ, as he lived his life perfectly obedient, taking our sins on the cross and His righteousness becoming ours. This proved to be true and sealed when the tomb was unsealed and He rose again. We ask, Father, that You would help us to walk with confidence in the light of Your Gospel by the power of Your Holy Spirit as we go forth. Father, guard us from our forgetfulness, guard us from ourselves, and guard us from the evil one. We pray all this in Your Son Jesus' name. Amen.