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Well, good morning, howdy, all of that stuff. I would say giggum, but after the game yesterday, I'm not sure. Oh, this is not a good way to start in a church like this, is it? Sorry about that. I have become an Aggie fan, so just so you know who we are, we are the Kirbys.

Started out, I was born in New Hampshire. Or not actually born in San Francisco and then moved to New Hampshire when I was a year old, so don't remember much of that. Grew up there. My wife is from Katie, Texas, Rachel. And her father was a pastor of Katie Bible Church for 36 years.

Retired recently, found out he has leukemia. So pray for him as he battles with that. Hopefully they'll be here tonight. His name is Ronald McDonald, so if you come tonight, you can meet Ronald McDonald. And then we have the rest of our family here. I introduced very quickly earlier, but Bryn, my youngest biological Allison, who was here singing with me, Bryn was on the piano, and then our two boys on the guitars back here, Peyton and Grant.

And they attend university at Texas A ⁇ M. And then you'll see four of our little ones running around, three five-year-olds and one four-year-old. And my parents are here from New Hampshire. And am I missing anybody? Did I get Justin? Yes, sorry. Great. I did introduce them both the other times I was up here.

So, Justin, my son-in-law, I'm from South Africa. If you want to hear that South African accent, talk to him and you'll get a little bit of that. But they live in Columbus, Ohio. Now, you can turn in your Bibles to Galatians chapter 4. I wanted to say thank you again.

I said thank you in some of the other services, but thank you again just for what you mean to our family in being a place where our boys can grow and hear the gospel and have a church family, which is so important. The local church is very important.

So important that God calls the local church his bride. If you've been married, hopefully you love your bride, and that is something that is very important to you. And as my bride is very important to me, and God calls the church his bride, and even the local church here.

And so, this is important to God, and why we love to come and preach and teach in local churches and work in our local church in South Africa. Galatians chapter 3, we'll start there. Adoption, we're going to talk about that this morning from Galatians chapter 3. It's really a glorious doctrine, largely because it shows us how deeply the Father loves us.

That's what adoption in Scripture is intended to mean. Do to show us this is how much God loves us. One has said, our first point about adoption is that it is the highest privilege that the gospel offers. Think about that for just a minute. The highest privilege, I would agree with that, that the gospel is the highest privilege that we can have as a Christian person being brought into God's family.

Another says, if you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child and having God as his father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and his prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all because father is the Christian name for God.

Do you think in terms of God as your father? Of course we say that. We pray, you know, Father, and we know our Father which art in heaven and all those things, but God uses those terms intentionally because he wants us to have a father-child relationship with him, and it's very important.

Maybe you've had a father that wasn't a good father. And so that kind of slants your view of God as a father. Well, it shouldn't get into scripture, and we're going to talk about this morning a little bit about what it means to have God as our father.

So I'm excited to talk to you today about adoption. It's really our favorite thing that we get to. To do in South Africa is to help families adopt. We've been able to help with 26 adoptions now, and we have 20 other families waiting to be able to adopt.

And so just pray for that. And we love to do that, and we love it in part because it's such a great picture of who God is to us and what God has done for us by adopting us. Galatians chapter 3, starting in verse 26, says this. You're all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.

As many of you as been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There's neither Jew nor Greek, there's no more bond or free, no more male or female. You're all one in Christ Jesus. And if you're Christ, then you're Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. Now, you've got to understand the context here of who Paul is talking to when he writes this.

He's talking to the church at Galatia, which is in modern-day Turkey. We believe that is where Ankara, the capital of Turkey, right in the center. We've been there, my wife and I have been there to this capital city of Turkey. And let me tell you, we did not run into any Jewish people in Ankara, Turkey.

In fact, you might say it's a dangerous place for a Jewish person to be. Less than 0.001% of people living in Turkey claim to be Christian. Less than 3,000 people, we were told when we were there. Out of 80 million people. So Paul was not talking to Jewish people when he was saying this, and he was departing from the prominent thought of the Jewish people in that day.

Let's jump down to Galatians chapter 4, verse 4. But when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, verse 5, to redeem them that were under the law. Why did he do this? That we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

That term Abba is one that Christ used when he was in the garden. Remember when he was praying just before he was taken to Calvary, just before he was taken? That's an endearing, it's like saying, Daddy, similar to that in our culture. Wherefore, thou are no more a servant, but you're a son.

And if you're a son, then an heir of God through Christ. Let's bow for prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your choice to adopt us into your family as born-again believers. Lord, we want to talk about the gospel here this morning and how it affects our lives.

First of all, how we need to trust in you as our Lord and Savior, and then these things that come as a part of being a born-again Christian, of being a believer, of being adopted into your family. And so, help us as we think on these things. Things this morning from Galatians chapter 3 and 4.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. When Leslie Lynch King Jr. died on December 26, 2006, it was a major news story all across the world. News anchors and columnists discussed his legacy, and in the U.S., flags were flown at half-mast, as is always the case when a president died.

But you might say, well, I've never heard of Leslie Lynch King Jr. as president. Well, that's a good thing because, in fact, there's no record of a person named Leslie Lynch King Jr. ever serving as president, but he did. In fact, he was a president during a crucial time in the history of the United States.

I was four years old when he became president. When he was young, Leslie's mother left his father. He was an alcoholic and he was physically abusing her, and they went to live with Leslie's grandparents. And during this time, Leslie's mother remarried, and she married a man named Gerald Ford.

Sometime later, Gerald Ford adopted Leslie and gave him his own name. And this is how Leslie Lynch Jr. became Gerald Ford, who later became the 38th President of the United States, the only man to ever become vice president and president without being elected to either office. You can see me after for that history tidbit, how that worked out.

But when Leslie was adopted, he took on a new name. His old life was gone, his life changed forever, and he was no longer known by that old name Leslie. Everybody now knows him as President Gerald Ford. The Bible also discusses adoption in many different places. Maybe you can think of a few people in the Bible who were adopted.

You might think of Moses, right? He was adopted by Pharaoh's daughter. Or you might think of Esther, who was adopted by her uncle Mordecai. We'll find out. I'll talk about it in a little bit. Caesar Augustus was adopted in the Bible. And you might think of others as well.

In the Old Testament, though, the formal concept of adoption is never discussed. It's only really until we get to the New Testament that it's discussed. In the Old Testament, it was really implied, or, you know, so-and-so was taken care of by her uncle, or Moses was taken into Pharaoh's family, but it's really not discussed in detail.

But Paul starts describing adoption. When he's using the term adoption, he's talking about our relationship with our Heavenly Father. And the idea of adoption starts to take root in Paul's epistles. And in many ways, this came as a big surprise to the people that he was writing to and preaching to and teaching to.

You might imagine it from the perspective of a Jewish person who would say, well, because Of my lineage, because of my heritage. It's very important to me. I can trace myself back in Paul's time. They might say, I could trace myself back all the way to such and such a person, or maybe back to Abraham, or somebody that everybody would know.

And I can trace my lineage, and because of that, I am a child of God. That's what the religious leaders of Paul's day, and particularly in Jesus' day, thought, isn't it? Remember when they came to John the Baptist? And the religious leaders come and he sees them, and what does he say?

Oh, you brood of vipers, you snakes. I mean, can you imagine being, I mean, imagine if I was up here preaching to you today. You snakes. You know, how dare you come here and come in your religious, your religiosity? And John says, see these stones here? God could raise up children to Abraham from these stones.

God doesn't need your heritage, he doesn't need your lineage. It doesn't mean anything when it comes to your personal relationship with God. Or imagine it from the perspective of a Gentile believer. Now, a Gentile believer might say, well, you know, John the Baptist was preaching and he was Jewish, and Jesus was Jewish, and Paul here is teaching and preaching and he's Jewish.

And so, sure, I'll convert, but I'll probably be some sort of second-class Christian all of my life. You know, these guys have the real deal, and I'm just. Kind of engrafted into the family, right? Well, Paul is blowing that out of the water. He's saying, no, there's no more Jew or Greek, there's no more bond or free, there's no more any of these distinctions.

Now we're all one in Jesus Christ. Do you remember the novel Ben-Hur, or maybe you've seen the movie, the old one with Charlton Heston? And Ben-Hur is betrayed by one of his best friends. And he ends up as a galley slave. He ends up in the bottom of a Roman warship and he's rowing.

And in those days, you were expected maybe you'd live a few days, few weeks, possibly a few months if you were really fortunate. Well, he lasted for quite a while. And finally, one day they were in a battle in this Roman warship. And what they would do is they would row as hard as they could and they would ram a ship.

And the ships fell apart in this battle. And so Ben-Hur gets away. He had been chained and he gets himself away. And then he sees this Roman commander, Tribune Arius, drowning. And he makes the decision to go over and help him, and he saves his life. And as a result of saving his life, Tribune Arius, this Roman warship commander, rewards him by adopting Ben-Hur.

And it immediately did a few things for Ben-Hur in his life. Number one, it made him a freeman, he was no longer a slave. Number two, it gave him a Roman citizenship. He's a new citizen in the country or in the empire. And he became a full son and heir to Arius, the same standing as a biological son.

He has a whole new identity. In fact, as we come to find out in just a minute, I'll talk a little bit more about it. But he had a better standing than most biological children would have. Because the way they looked at it is, I chose to bring you into my family.

I actually like you. I maybe don't like some of my biological children. And oftentimes they would adopt somebody into their family with the express purpose to make them their heir that would take all of the things that they had and would run it for them because they knew my biological children are not able to do that for whatever reason.

Or maybe they didn't have a biological children and so they would bring them in. In much the same way as this happened to Ben-Hur, a fictional character, well, this actually happened in real life with Caesar Augustus. You remember him from Luke chapter 2? This is a Caesar Augustus that decreed that all the world should be taxed.

We remember that at Christmas time every year. Well, he became Caesar when Julius Caesar adopted him and made him his heir. He actually became the first Roman emperor. Caesar Augustus was the first Roman emperor. And we find out that at least seven more that we know of Roman emperors were adopted.

Adopted for the express purpose of being made emperor of the Roman Empire because they wanted to choose the previous emperor wanted to choose who would be their heir. And this is important because it helps us to understand how Paul and so the Galatians and everybody else in his day would understand adoption and what it meant to them at that time.

Now, we talk about adoption, but it can mean different things in our culture. Well, in Paul's culture, it meant these three basic things at least. Number one, spiritually, when you accept Christ as your Savior, you become a freeman. You're no longer a slave to sin. Paul tells us we are the chains come off.

We're no longer bound by those chains of sin. Number two, you have a new citizenship. Our citizenship, remember, we're just sojourners here on our way to our real country, which is heaven. We are heavenly citizens. Do you think about that and what that means? Of course, we're proud to be American citizens.

And, you know, we're proud of many being here in Aggie land and being Aggies or whatever else you might be. We're proud of those things. But our real citizenship is in heaven, and we should be looking forward to that. And number three, we become a full heir, just like Ben-Hur did, just like the Roman emperors did.

You become a full heir. Everything that God has. Becomes ours. Hopefully, we'll get a chance to talk about that a little bit more this morning, too. So, let's try to answer some questions. Let's start out with the first question: How are we adopted? How are we adopted into God's family?

Well, adoption is a legal act. First of all, you have a person that's not a member of your family. We've adopted two children. Maybe some of you have been adopted here. Maybe you've adopted somebody. You have somebody that's not a member of your family. Then you go step through, you go to an adoption process, a legal process to adopt somebody.

And then a new person becomes a legal member of your family. It took us three years to adopt our first two children, Zachariah and Laylo. And here I have from South Africa, from the Department of Social Development, the Registrar of Adoptions. It has his name here, the adoption of Zachariah Matonzi.

Now we're changing his name to Zachariah Kirby. It says this: Your adopted child is now for all purposes regarded as your child, as if born to you. And you are now, for all purposes, regarded as a parent of the adopted child. And that's what happens when God adopts us.

We're for all purposes regarded as God's child. In other words, we are born again into God's family. And you are, and God now is our father. It says, for all purposes. Regarded as a parent of the adopted child. That's what God does. And so our adoption by God is a legal act.

In fact, it's a furthering of what Paul talks about here in Galatians chapter 4, verse 5, of redemption or the redeeming act. God, in the person of Christ, paid the ransom for us to be bought out of slavery. And so God said, there's sin. Sin has entered into the world.

And there's a penalty that must be paid for this sin. And that penalty is either death forever in hell or accepting that Jesus Christ paid the penalty, he redeemed us back from the slavery of sin. And so you will either do one of two things in your life.

You will either reject Christ, and that penalty will be paid with an eternity in hell. And we would call on you, if you haven't accepted Christ, to turn to Him and to come to Him. Or God sent His only Son, His beloved Son, John 3:16. Why? So that we could turn to Him and be saved.

He paid, He redeemed us back. Well, He didn't just redeem us, He also justified us. You often think of that term and you say, Well, justified means just as if I'd never sinned, right? Well, that's a good way to remember it, but it doesn't quite go far enough because it's It's not just that.

It's not that God goes, okay, I absolve you of your sin. We see that sometimes, right, in some religions. I absolve you of your sin. It's done. God didn't stop there. God said, okay, I see your sin, and he makes a great exchange, our sin for his righteousness.

It's not just a declaration that we are innocent or we're forgiven, but that we are just and we are righteous in the sight of God. It's his divine declaration that we are perfectly righteous, the result of what Christ did on the cross. So by faith, we have this great exchange.

When we come to Christ, as Galatians 3:26 says, we come in faith, there's this great exchange. Christ, he sees all of our sin. God knows every one of us in here is a sinner. There's none that seeks after God. There's none that does good. And yet when we turn to him, God says, my son paid that penalty.

And so he is actually taking our sin, everyone's sin in here that has accepted him as Savior, goes on Jesus Christ. And because of his perfect life that he lived here on earth, his righteousness then is imputed or put on us. So when God sees us, he no longer sees us as sinners.

It's not, okay, you were a sinner and now I absolve you of that sin. No, you were a sinner. Now, instead of seeing that you were a sinner, I see my son. I see my son's righteousness on you. And when I look on you, isn't that a lot different than seeing somebody and saying, well, I know what you did, but it's been forgiven.

Or I no longer remember what you did because I've taken those sins and removed them as far as the east is from the west. But now, when I look at you, I see my son and his righteousness instead. And so that's justification. But God didn't stop there. Now, it would have been great if he did, right?

If he just redeemed us and paid that penalty for our sin, or if he justified us and said, okay, now when I see you, I see my son's righteousness. But he didn't stop there. He went on to adopt us. And in adopting us, God made us part of his family.

Imagine, if you will, the most wicked person that you can think of. Sitting in court, they've done the most heinous acts. They've committed the most heinous crimes that you can imagine. Their court, their trial has gone on, it's finished. They've been found guilty. Everybody knows they're guilty. You shudder to think of the things that they've done.

And they stand there in that courtroom, and the judge is about to sentence them. And everyone in that courtroom knows what the sentence will be. It's going to be death, because they deserve death for their heinous crimes that they've committed. And that's what the law requires. But then imagine, if you will, the magistrate looking down at them and saying, I want you to know something.

I want you to know that my son came and physically paid the penalty for what you have done. My son died in your place and was beaten for you, for those sins, for those crimes that you committed. And he says, if you will just trust in him and turn to him, then you will be forgiven.

Imagine the man falling on that and asking forgiveness in the name of the son. And then the judge, I mean, that's enough, right? That would be enough. But then it's as if that magistrate gets up from his seat and walks down and he says, Come, come with me.

I want you to be part of my family. Now you're going to live with me. Now you're going to be heir of everything that I have. Now when I see you, I see the righteousness of my son. When I look at you, I see that my son cared for you so much that he paid the penalty for your sin, and now I want you to be part of my family.

In fact, in Romans 8, he says, I want you to be an heir with my son. I want you to be a joint heir with Christ. Everything that I'm giving my son, I am giving to you. It almost sounds blasphemous when you say it, when you think of that, doesn't it?

But look at Romans chapter 8. If we have a chance, we'll get there. When he says, we become joint heirs with Jesus Christ. That's why. He came and paid that penalty for us. Look again at the passage, Galatians chapter 3, verse 26. For you are all children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.

Now, many people will say, Well, we're all children of God simply because we were born, because we're human. Well, we are made in the image of God, we were created in His image, but we're not children of God spiritually until we come to Him, as it says here, by faith in Christ Jesus.

And then, verse 4, it says, But when the fullness of time was come, think about God in heaven, all that's going around in His throne room, and all that's going on in heaven, and the angels there. And all of a sudden, God says, Wait a minute, the time has come.

The fullness of time has come. I'm going to send you, son. It's time for you to go. And he goes down, and he's born, made of a woman, made under the law. Why? To redeem those that are under the law. Why did he do all this? That we might receive the adoption of sons, that we could become part of his family.

Jesus, the word, as John 1 tells us, becomes flesh. He lives a perfect life here on earth to redeem us, and by faith in him we become his children. We are adopted into God's family. God, in His infinite, He knew this was going to happen before time ever was created.

This was His plan, His gracious master plan. He made a way for us not just to become righteous, but to become an intimate part of His family. You see, when you adopt somebody into your family, you're saying, I want you to be part of my family. I want to have an intimate father, son, mother, daughter, whatever relationship with you.

I choose to bring you into my family. Our condemning judge is now our loving Abba Father. That word Abba is what Christ used in the garden when He called out to His Father. As one man put it, what a turnabout. We were on our way to hell. We were without God.

We were without hope in this world. We were lost, we're spiritually dead, totally unable to save ourselves. We're filthy with sin, guilty through and through, condemned to eternal death. The righteous judge had pronounced the sentence against us according to his perfect law, and all that waited was for us to be cast into hell.

But then, God's only begotten Son comes, and in one great transaction, he not only causes the righteous judge who condemns us to declare us not guilty, but he also says, Father, I want you to bring them into the family. This judge, he says, I want you to adopt.

Adopt them as your children. What grace is this? What indescribable mercy. The Apostle John, as was read this morning, put it this way: Behold, or look, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called what? The sons of God. That's the privilege.

Do you live like that as God's child? That God is your Father and He loves us intimately, not this distant Father that, okay, we all understand, we've said those words, yes, God is my Father or our Father which art in heaven, but do you understand what that really means?

That God wants to be our heavenly Father, He wants to have a relationship with us. That should revolutionize the way that we think, that we pray, that we read our Bible, because when we're reading our Bible, it's God's letter to us saying, child, I want you to know how I want you to live.

Read it and live thereby. It's amazing. It's really just amazing. Now, that's how we're adopted. But there are privileges that come with adoption. Privilege number one, or really all these privileges can be wrapped up in relationships because God wants to have relationship with us. That's what we'll talk about tonight.

Night at the service this evening. The difference between Christianity and almost any other religion, if not every other religion, is that God wants to have a personal relationship with us. Most religions put God here somewhere and he's angry or he's a good God, but he's up here. We don't have a personal relationship with us, he doesn't call us his sons and daughters.

And yet, Christianity does. Well, the first privilege is the relationship with God as our Father that we just talked about. And I want to just tell you a few things about my father, about my heavenly father, and how good he is. Now, as I said, maybe you've had an earthly father that wasn't a good father.

I had the privilege of having an earthly father who was a good father and who was and is a good example and a good show for me to see what God is like in some ways. But as great as my earthly father is, he pales in comparison to my heavenly father, and he would say the same.

Think of Psalm 103, verse 13 and 14: Like a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion or pities those that fear him. God has compassion on his children. Think of Matthew chapter 7. I love the Sermon on the Mount, and Christ is talking through Matthew chapter 5.

6 and 7. Basically, he's saying, Okay, here's my kingdom. Look at that in chapter, I think it starts in chapter 5. And he's saying, Things are going to be different. Okay, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are you, and men shall revile you and persecute you, say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake.

Rejoice, be exceeding glad. You know, then he goes on and talks about adultery and what it looks like in his kingdom, and what lust and adultery really, all of those things he goes through. And then he goes in Matthew chapter 7 to verse 11 and he says, Okay, what if you had a child?

And your child came to you and said, Dad, can I have some bread? Would you go ahead and give him a stone? No, that's ridiculous. We wouldn't do that. Or maybe you had a child and you said, I'm hungry, and they asked for some fish. I don't know what kind of child asked for fish.

You know, we like beef and whatever, but ask for fish. Would you give him a serpent? No, absolutely not. That's crazy. And then Christ says these words: If you who are evil, because we are evil at our core, right? Without the righteousness of Christ brought on us, if you're evil and you know how to give good gifts, you know how to give bread or fish or whatever else you might give at birthday time or Christmas time, you know how to give good gifts to your children.

How much more would your heavenly Father know how to give good gifts to them that love him or that to the love? Them that ask him. Much more. It's a rhetorical question. God knows how to give good gifts to his children. Imagine one of my favorite pictures in the Bible comes in Luke chapter 15, the prodigal son.

And you have this picture. We know he went away. Most of you know the story, I'm sure. He left his father, asked for his inheritance, went and blew it all, finds himself one day literally sitting in a pigsty, which for a Jewish person has added negative components. And he's sitting there and he goes, Oh, wow, look at what they're eating.

That actually looks kind of good. I might try some of that. And the Bible says he came to his senses. That's what the Bible says. And he said, Wait a minute, my dad's servants live better than this. What if I just go back to dad and say, Dad, please forgive me?

I know I can never be your son again, but if you'll just take me in as a servant, that'll be great. Just feed me. Just clothe me. That's all I ask. And so he decides to go back and try this out, see if his father will take him back.

And the Bible has one of the greatest pictures, one of the most kind and compassionate pictures of our God that you'll ever see. Think of it: here comes the son, and it says, The father saw him from afar off. In other words, he was standing. There, day after day after day, waiting for his son to come back.

And then the Bible says, he saw his son from afar off and he went back inside, right? Is that what the Bible says? No. He saw his son from afar off and he went and he sat down in a chair and he waited for him to come to him, right?

No, that's not what he did. The Bible says he saw his son afar off and he ran to him and he fell on his neck and he kissed him and he hugged him and he brought him home. And he said, Come, let's throw a party. My son has come home again.

Give him the best shoes and the best clothes and the best food. We're going to have a party for my son who has come home again. Let me tell you, that is my father. That is a God who loves and cares for and has compassion on his children.

Well, he's also a providing father. Psalm 24:1 tells us that the earth is the Lord's and everything in it, everything that we see here, everywhere that we go. I've seen some beautiful places in South Africa and New Hampshire. We call that God's country. I think it's the most beautiful, one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Even driving through Texas, there are some really beautiful places here, and I've seen those. All of that is God's. Songwriter says, He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, the wealth in every mine. We have tons of. Mines through South Africa, gold mines, diamond mines, platinum mines. God owns it all.

He owns the rivers, the rocks, the rills, the sun, and the stars that shine. Wonderful riches, more than tongue could ever tell. And I love the last line: He is my Father, so they're mine as well. That's my Father. He's a providing Father. Matthew 6:26, we're back in the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus is sitting there, and I imagine He's sitting in a field, and He loves to teach using things that are around that people can identify with. And in verse 26, He says, Look, I imagine maybe there was a bird flying, and He said, Look, look at the fowls of the air.

They don't sow, they don't reap, they're not trying to go out and bring in the sheaves of grain. They don't gather things and build barns and put things into the barn, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Another rhetorical question: He says, Are you not much better than they are?

Absolutely. We're made in God's image. We are much better than they are, and yet God takes care of them. And verse 28, he says, Why do you care about your raiment, what you're wearing, your clothes? Look over here, look at this flower, look at this lily of the field.

Look at how it grows. They don't toil. You know, he's not working over there and trying to make ends meet. They don't spin. They don't have a spinning wheel there and trying to make clothes. And he says, I tell you this: even Solomon. Now, Solomon was the pinnacle of everything that an earthly person could want, right?

He had all the wealth. He had done everything that you can imagine. He had the best clothes. He was maybe the richest man, one of the richest men to ever live, the wisest man to live. And yet, Jesus says, Look at this lily of the field. Solomon on his best day, when he was wearing his best clothes, he didn't look as good as that little flower there.

And so he goes on and says, If God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and that flower is going to be gone tomorrow, it's going to be thrown into the fire somewhere, won't he care for you, O you of little faith? That's my father.

He is compassionate, and he provides for me. He also is a protecting father. Psalm 34, 19 says, Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers out of them all. Or Psalm 23, we all love this one, right? How does it go? The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

And then jumping down, it says, Yea, or even though I would walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. One. Why? You are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. He protects us. He provides, he protects, he corrects us.

We call this the benefit or the privilege of discipline. Now, you probably often don't think of it that way, but the Bible tells us that who God loves, he corrects. That's different than penalty. Somebody does something wrong and God judges them. That's different than what he does with his children because when he corrects his children, it's to bring them back to him, to help them to understand that their sin is wrong, and to bring them into a relationship, a better relationship with him.

He says this, my son, in Proverbs 3, despise not the chastening of the Lord. Don't be wary of his correction. Because whom the Lord loves, he corrects, even as a father, the son who he delights in. So just like you, if you have a child, have you ever been in a store somewhere?

I'm sure you have, and you've seen some kid, and they're just going berserko out there, and you're like, wow, that kid could use some discipline. You probably saw one of my kids, like Peyton or Grant or something. That kid could use some discipline. Do you go over to that kid and discipline them?

No, why don't you do that? Well, they'd throw you in jail if you did. Or the parent would punch you in the face or something like that, right? We don't go over and do that. Why? It's not our child. But our children, who we love, we correct, we discipline to bring them back to a right relationship with us, to teach them the right way to do things.

Hebrews 12 says the same exact thing. My son, don't despise the chastening of the Lord. Don't faint when you're rebuked by him. Because whom the Lord loves, he chastens, he scourges every son he receives. The Bible uses that word scourge. Do you know what a scourging is? It's with a whip.

In other words, God is saying this is not always an easy discipline. This could be something really hard that God uses to bring you back into relationship with Him, correct relationship with Him. And He says, But He chastens us, why? For our profit, so that we might be partakers of His holiness.

God's discipline warns us that sin has consequences. It leads us to repentance and back to fellowship with God. In our classroom, so we have a school that we've started in our ministry. And by the way, please come over and visit our ministry. We'd love to. Pastor and I were talking, we'd love to have a church group come over.

We just had a man come over to help with some of our building projects, and we'd love to have you come and help with those or help with the babies or whatever. One of the things that interns and others will often do is help in our school. Well, We wanted to have some positive reinforcement for doing good, and so we put 25 footprints up on our wall in our school, and then we made an animal figure for each of our kids that are in school.

And every day that they're good, they get to move forward one step. And when they get to 25, we take them to McDonald's, or we might buy them a toy, or something like that. We've got a box in one of our rooms that has some toys that they can go and they can take one, and that's their specific toy.

Well, if they're really good, they might move forward even two steps or something. But if they're bad on a naughty on a particular day, they might move back a step, or if you're really naughty, you might move back two steps. And occasionally, we've had some move three steps back in one day.

But we try to get them to move forward, and that is we're doing that to show them here is the correct way to be in a relationship with your teacher and with your parents and with those around you, and that's what God does. And it teaches us spiritual maturity.

Well, privilege number two, just in closing here, I think I have a couple minutes. Privilege number two is that Jesus is our brother. Turn to Romans chapter eight, really quickly, if you can. Romans chapter eight. Do you remember when people came to Jesus in Mark chapter three, and Jesus had been going around the countryside and he'd been preaching and teaching and healing people and often trying to find a way.

To get away with his disciples. But as you can imagine, if somebody was here and he was healing people and it was really happening, people were actually being healed from all sorts of diseases, you would want to go and see that guy and have your family member healed.

And so they were following Jesus all over the place. The Bible says, so much so that he couldn't even find a place to eat his bread. He was so thronged by people. And we pick things up in Mark chapter 3:32. You don't need to turn there, but the crowd tells him that his mother and brothers are looking for him.

And what is Jesus' response? He looks at him and he says, Who's my mother? Who are my brothers? He looks around and he says, You. You that are believers are my mother. You're my brothers. In other words, you are my family. Christians are Christ's family. In John 20, verse 17, Jesus said to her, Touch me not, for I'm not ascended to my Father, but go to my brethren, say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father.

Or Romans 8, where you are, verses 15 through 17, you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear. You have received the spirit of adoption. This is why we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself bears witness with our Spirit that we are the children of God.

And if children, then Heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Remember reading that and thinking about that and thinking, that means I'm a co-heir. Okay, if you're a co-owner of a house with somebody, you own that house with them, right? If you're a co-heir with somebody, you know, my brothers and sisters, there's five of us, we're co-heirs of our parents, you know, if they don't spend everything before they pass on to heaven.

And we're co-heirs, right? All of us together. Well, that's the same thing here: that Christ, we are co-heirs with Him. That should change the way we think about our relationship with God. God is our Father, and we've talked about that. Jesus Christ is our brother. We're co-heirs. In other words, everything that Christ has and is heir to, we also are heir to.

What does this include? Hebrews 1:2, Christ is appointed heir of all things. In other words, everything is Christ's. And so we're heirs of everything with Him. Psalm 24:1, as we said before, the earth is the Lord's and everything in it. Revelation 21:3 tells us that God Himself, we are heirs of God Himself.

Romans 8:17, which we read, we are heirs of His suffering. It's not something we Like to think about, right? But if we're brothers with Christ, we're sons of God, then we partake in his suffering. And Romans 8:29 tells us that we are conformed to Christ's image. We are heirs of glorified bodies.

I look forward to the day where we get to take that body, this old body, this old rag here, is taken away, and we have glorified bodies. We get to see our brother, be with our Father physically, and then I won't go on to this next one, but we have the privilege of the Holy Spirit coming into our lives.

I have here probably 10 things that the Holy Spirit does. When I studied for this, I had forgotten everything that the Holy Spirit is responsible for. It's a great study to do if you get the chance. That is one of the things that we inherit in this. I hope you're excited about adoption and what that means for us.

I just want to close in prayer, and then I'll turn over to Pastor. And thank you very much for coming. If you're here today and you don't know Christ as your Savior, please come and speak to us. We'd love to help you to turn to Him. Heavenly Father, thank you for who you are.

Thank you that you're our Father. Christ is our brother. The Holy Spirit is our Comforter. And everyone in here that knows you as their Savior is our brother or sister. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.