Adopted and Blessed

0:35So he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. And it was told to Jacob, Your son Joseph has come to you. Then Israel summoned his strength and sat up in bed. And Jacob said to Joseph, God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me, and said to me, Behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will make of you a company of peoples, and I will give this land to your offspring after you for an everlasting possession. And now your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, are mine. Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, as Reuben and Simeon are. And the children that you fathered after them shall be yours. They shall be called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance. As for me, when I came from Padan, to my sorrow, Rachel died in the land. Land of Canaan on the way, when there was still some distance to go to Ifroth. And I buried her there on the way to Ephroth. That is, Bethlehem.

1:39This is God's word. You may be seated. Over the past month, I've probably had a couple dozen people walk up to me either after worship or somewhere in the community and ask me, is it true? And I kind of look down and shuffle my feet a little bit because it's hard to admit. But it is true. The duty family now owns a dog. Here's Oliver, or Ollie, as we call him. I suppose he doesn't shed too much or poop too much or bark too much.

2:26All in all, he's been fun to have around. Now, obviously, Ollie is not a puppy. He's one and a half or two, but we don't know for sure because we bought him from a local animal shelter. Now, a lot of people refer to the process of buying a dog who isn't a puppy as adoption, but biblically, that's not what adoption is. Biblically, adoption is an act of God whereby he makes us full members of his family with all the attendant privileges and responsibilities.

2:58And when parents adopt, Children, as several members of New Life have done or are in the process of doing, those children also become full members of those families with all the attendant privileges and responsibilities. You see, adoption is a past-tense reality with present-tense implications. It is something that has happened. You were adopted, but once you've been adopted, you are now a full member of the family with all the rights and all the privileges that biological children have.

3:33And, friends, today we're going to be looking at Genesis chapter 48. And in this chapter, we're going to spend a significant amount of time thinking about adoption generally and specifically our adoption into God's family and what that means for us as believers. And so, what we're going to learn today through Genesis 48 is that adoption into God's family is the greatest blessing we receive in Christ. So, let's look at the text together now at the start of chapter 48.

4:03You see, at the beginning of the chapter, it says that Jacob is now old. He is, in fact, 147 years old, and Joseph hears that he is ill and he is probably about to die. And so, Joseph goes to visit him with his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. And the purpose of the visit, of course, is to pay respect to his father, but also to have him bless the boys before he dies. Now, one of the things that you'll notice right away at the beginning of the chapter. Chapter is that the author uses the name Jacob when he describes this elderly, sick man. But when the time comes for the blessing of the boys, the author changes his name to refer to him as Israel, the man who wrestled with God and men and prevailed. Israel, and not Jacob, is the one who summons his strength and sits upright in bed to bless the boys.

4:58Now, as we know, identity plays a very important role in all of life. It plays an important role in our lives. It plays an important role in all of the lives of the people that we find in Scripture. And in fact, who or what defines me is one of the most questions that we have to answer in life. All of us are defined by something. And so that's why you see the process of naming to be so significant in the Bible.

5:23Because a name carries meaning with it, it carries identity with it. And that's why it was so important when God changed a name in Scripture what that signified. Jacob was the one who cheated or deceived to get ahead in life. That's what his name meant. He cheats or he deceives. But God changed his name to Israel. He wrestles with God. And what a different identity that he had from that moment forward. And so you see here that Israel begins by recalling all of God's promises and blessing in his own life. He notes that God appeared to him and blessed him, saying that I will be. Make you fruitful and multiply you. And God kept his promise, didn't he? I mean, here you had this lonely man who left his hometown and his home country and traveled far away. And over the period of decades that ensued, he became a family of 70, a company of 70 persons.

6:20God kept his word. And second, he recalls that God said, I will give this land to your offspring as an everlasting possession. They didn't yet possess it. In fact, the entire family had little more than one burial plot, just a small piece of land back in Canaan that they owned. And yet God had made this promise, and he knew that he would fulfill it. Now, if it seems to you like this is the millionth time that we've seen these promises repeated in Scripture, it's because it almost is. I went back behind Genesis 48 and looked through all the chapters that we've covered, and this is at least the 12th time since Genesis chapter 12 that God has repeated these promises, or Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have repeated these same promises to their children. And it might seem like overkill. Why do we need to talk again and again about these promises? But I think we're so quick to forget how long these men and women had to wait for the fulfillment of these promises to ensue. It was about 2100 BC when God first appeared to Abraham.

7:29It was about four. 1400 BC, when the people finally left Egypt and went into the promised land, 700 years had passed, 300 years of nomadic living, 400 years of slavery in Egypt, 40 more years of wandering in the desert. All of those years had passed. Do you think that you would need reminders over 700 years of what God had said? 12 reminders in 700 years is not that many. And in the same way, last week we looked at Revelation chapter 22, where Jesus said, Behold, I am coming soon.

8:06Well, those words were uttered some 1,900 years ago at this point. Jesus said, I am coming soon. Why do you think we need reminders? That's why we talked about the importance of longing for our true king and country, meditating and encouraging one another about God's word and his promises, because we are so quick to forget. We need those reminders. That's why we need one another, and that's why we need God's word. And so, after recounting God's promises, Israel makes this amazing pronouncement in verse 5. Look there. He says that he is going to adopt Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manasseh.

8:48Now, that seems very strange to me. Surely that seems strange to you as well. Why would a dying grandfather say that he wanted to adopt his grandson? Sons when their father was not only alive and well, but wealthy and successful. What need was there for him to step in and say, I'm going to adopt these boys? We have to understand what adoption means biblically. And this goes back to naming and the inheritance that sons received. And so Israel, what he is doing is bestowing the highest possible honor on Joseph's sons. They're going to take the place not only of Joseph, but of Reuben and Simeon, his firstborn sons.

9:38And that would later mean that when they entered the promised land, Ephraim and Manasseh were going to receive the double portion that the firstborn son received. All of the other brothers would get one-twelfth of the promised land, but Ephraim and Manasseh would receive one-sixth of the promised land. So if you've ever been reading the scripture before, and you've wondered to yourself, you know, we read about the tribe of Levi, we read about the tribe of Judah, we read about the tribe of Benjamin, you hear about all these tribes. Why do you never hear about the tribe of Joseph?

10:12It's because Ephraim and Manasseh were adopted by Jacob in Joseph's place. They were the ones through whom the promises would be passed down. This decision not only honored his late wife Rachel, whom he loved, not only Honored and blessed Joseph as the one who delivered the family from starvation thanks to God's kind providence, but this meant that Ephraim and Manasseh were going to receive greater spiritual and physical blessings than they could have ever dreamed. And friends, what had they done to deserve this?

10:48Jacob had only just met these boys just a few years prior. What had they done to deserve this? The answer is nothing. They did nothing to deserve the blessing that they would now receive. They are receiving that which they did not earn, adoption into Jacob's family, not just as grandsons, but as sons with all of the rights, all of the inheritance, all of the privileges that were going to come their way. And as we'll see as we move forward in the text, adoption into an earthly family is a great and wonderful blessing, but adoption into God's family is the greatest blessing of all. Look with me now at verse 8.

11:36When Israel saw Joseph's sons, he said, Who are these? Joseph said to his father, They are my sons, whom God has given me here. And he said, Bring them to me, please, that I may bless them. Now the eyes of Israel were dim with age, so that he could not see. So Joseph brought them near him, and he kissed them and embraced them. And Israel said to Joseph, I never expected to see your face. And behold, God has let me see your offspring also. Then Joseph removed them from his knees and he bowed himself with his face to the earth. And Joseph took them both, Ephraim in his right hand toward Israel's left hand, and Manasseh in his left hand toward Israel's right hand, and brought them near him. And Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it on the head of Ephraim, who was the younger, and his left hand on the head of Manasseh, crossing his hands, for Manasseh was the firstborn. And he blessed Joseph and said, The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the boys, and in them let my name be carried on, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.

13:08Well, in his old age, Israel had grown blind just like his father Isaac, and he asked to ask who the boys are, even though they're right in front of him. And so Joseph brings them forward and he kisses them and embraces them. And Israel rejoices, because there was a time that he thought he would never ever see Joseph's face again, let alone get to meet. His grandchildren. Now, friends, if Israel had become a bitter old man, who could blame him? As we've talked about at other points, Israel had a very difficult life. As a child, he was not the favorite between him and his twin brother Esau. When he grew up and got married, his father-in-law was very terrible to him, evil toward him. He lost his beloved wife, and he lost 25 years with a son that he loved.

14:02But Israel isn't a bitter old man. Instead, he chose to rejoice in the good things that God had given to him. And, friends, when I look out at the culture today, the landscape of our society, both inside and outside the church, what I see is bitterness and cynicism and sarcasm pervading almost everything. And I'm concerned about the effect that it's having on me and the effect that it's having on you and on Christians everywhere. Because the reality is that when we learn to complain about everything and make fun of everything, it's hard to just flip a switch and then practice gratitude.

14:46It's very hard to do that. We shouldn't deceive ourselves and think that we can feed a spirit of bitterness and cynicism and sarcasm and then rejoice when others rejoice. We shouldn't deceive ourselves. Ourselves and think that when we complain about every small inconvenience in our lives, that we're going to be able to be joyful in suffering. That's just not the way that it works. And yet, what I see on social media and what I see in other forms of entertainment and what I hear coming out of my own mouth and out of our mouths in the church is the same things that we see being practiced in the culture: bitterness and cynicism and sarcasm.

15:28Friends, that's the pathway to becoming a jaded person who can't rejoice when others rejoice, who can't celebrate when God blesses others, who can't look at the blessings in our own lives and celebrate. But Jacob was able to do that. Israel had been through real suffering in his life. We cannot forget that. And some of that was self-inflicted, wasn't it? Some of those things he brought on himself. But he was also humbled by the grace of God. And we see him now as an old man who is humbled and thankful for all that he had received. And we need to be those kinds of thankful people.

16:14And so we see Joseph here bringing the boys to his father. And to make it as easy as possible on him, on his elderly, blind father, he puts his firstborn son in his left hand and his secondborn son in his right hand. And it's so awful. Awesome, because Israel knows how type A Joseph is. You see this? He knows. This is what he's going to do. He's like, okay, he knows I'm blind. He's going to set this up for me perfectly. And so he crosses his arms. And that's going to come into play in just a few minutes.

16:50Well, as he blesses Joseph, he says a few things that are very critical for us to reflect on. The first is that he addresses the God of Abraham and Isaac, the God of his fathers. I think one of the things that he's doing is that he is acknowledging his place and their place in redemptive history. He's recognizing that although he's playing a huge role in the establishment of God's people, he's not the only one that God has used or that God will use to bring about his purposes.

17:25And again, going back to what I see and hear in our culture today, so many Christians are crying out on social media after every new development in the culture, after every political loss. And you would think that we believed that something was going to prevail against the church, even though Jesus says the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. Friends, you and I are playing an important role in redemptive history, but we're playing a small role.

18:00And if even the gates of hell aren't going to prevail against the church, then we don't have to worry like I see so many Christians worrying today about the future. Instead, we can acknowledge where we are in redemptive history. We can thank God for what he's done before us and what he's going to do after us. And we can remember our place that he intends to use us as one part of his plan to redeem a people from every tribe, tongue, and nation for his own glory.

18:29The second thing that he does is he notes that God has been his shepherd his whole life. Isn't this a beautiful statement that he makes? The God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day. Now, I want you to remember: Israel himself is a shepherd, a very, very successful one. And yet he looks at God, and the older that he got, the more he realized how God had been his shepherd through all of his life. Now, if you were with us when we were covering the beginning stages of Jacob's life, this was not a man who wanted to be led, who wanted to be shepherded by God. He got his name, Jacob, he deceives, he cheats, and he lived that out.

19:12Anything that Jacob saw and wanted, he tried to come up with a plan for how he could deceive and cheat to get that thing. He didn't trust in the Lord. He didn't trust God to shepherd him. But now, at the end of his life, Looking back on all that God did and how God was with him every step of the way, providing for him, protecting him, even when it didn't seem like that was happening. Even when Jacob did not even realize that he needed that, he can look back on his life and he could say, God has been my shepherd all my life long to this day. And friends, my hope for you is that whether you're already a Christian or you're not yet a Christian, you can look back on the events of your life and you can see how God has been actively present, shepherding you and caring for you, even at times where you did not worship him, did not acknowledge him, did not see your need for a shepherd or a savior.

20:17Because that was Israel's story, too. But he came to this place where he could acknowledge God's kind shepherding in his life, and hopefully we will too. Now, in his actual blessing, he prays that God would fulfill the promises he made to his grandfather Abraham and to his father Isaac and to him, and that they would grow into a multitude. But the question is, what is Joseph going to think about this strange decision to cross his arms when he blessed the boys? So let's pick up now in verse 17 together.

20:54When Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, it displeased him. And he took his father's hand to move it from Ephraim's head to Manasseh's head. And Joseph said to his father, Not this way, my father, since this one is the firstborn. Put your right hand on his head. But his father refused and said, I know, my son, I know. He also shall become a people, and he also shall be great. Nevertheless, his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his offspring shall become a multitude of nations. So he blessed them that day, saying, By you, Israel will pronounce blessings, saying, God make you as Ephraim and as Manasseh. Thus he put Ephraim before Manasseh. Then Israel said to Joseph, Behold, I am about to die, but God will be with you, and will bring you again to the land of your fathers. Moreover, I have given to you rather than to your brothers one mountain slope that I took from the hand of the Amorites with my sword and with my bow.

22:04Well, you see what Joseph thought about his father's action of crossing his arms. He was displeased when his dad laid his right hand on Ephraim's head, the secondborn, and his left hand on Manasseh's head, the firstborn. And he tried to move it, and he said, Not this way, my father. That really struck me when I read it. Not this way, my father. Why did Joseph say that? Well, it's because that's not the way that things were done. The way that things were done back then is that the firstborn received the primary blessing, the secondborn received the second greatest blessing, and so on and so forth. And so Joseph says, not this way, my father. But, friends, God's ways are not our ways. God does not submit to our human protocol. We see that he blessed Abel and not Cain.

23:01He blessed Isaac and not Ishmael. He blessed Jacob and not Esau, and now he's blessing Ephraim and not Manasseh. And nearly every single time this happened, the father was surprised, even offended, that the younger son was receiving the blessing that he thought the firstborn son deserved. Now, friends, how many times have we reacted like this? We've all seen God orchestrating events in our lives that we did not like or that we did not think were the way that we wanted them to go, and we have said, in effect, not this way, my father.

23:41And I think for all of us fathers, especially on Father's Day, we can reflect on many times that we have sought to do something good for our children that was in their best interest. And they've essentially said to us, not this way, my father. We have a funny story that we still laugh about in our house. When one of our kids Was really little. They were in the bathtub, and we walk in the bathroom and we say, All right, it's time to get out of the tub. And they look at us and go, No, not.

24:17We still laugh about that, and it's such a great example of what we do to the Lord. The Lord says, You know, this is the way that I'm going to take your life. You're going through this trial, you're not going to receive this blessing that you think you want. And we say, No, not. Not this way, my father. I think about all the times that I've gone through some kind of a trial, some kind of a difficult situation. Things did not pan out the way that I wanted.

24:44And I thought, Not this way, my father. But I'm reminded every single time we read passages like this: that as an adopted child of God, the Lord is always doing what is in my best interest. He is always doing what is in your best interest, though it may not seem like that at the time. And don't you just love Israel's response to him? I know, my son. I know. I mean, those are the words of a wise father who has experienced so much disappointment, so much heartache in his own life, so many times. He himself has thought or said to God, not this way, my father. And he is seen now at 147 years old, God orchestrating all of those events perfectly for his good and the good of his family. And so now, when his son says to him, not this way, my father, he can say, I know, my son. I know.

25:53I know it doesn't seem best right now, but you'll have to trust me because the Lord has revealed this to me. He assures Joseph, Manasseh is going to become great as well, but Ephraim is going to become even greater. And we see that as we get further on into the Old Testament. The very man who led Israel and his people into the promised land was Joshua, who was an Ephraimite. Many years later, there is a man named Jeroboam who led a rebellion against Solomon, Solomon's son Rehoboam. Jeroboam also was an Ephraimite. And so we see this prophecy coming true. They did become great for good or for ill. Both things happened in the future. And so after the blessing, Israel acknowledges that he doesn't have long to live, but that Joseph didn't need to despair. Because now not only were his sons adopted, not only were they going to receive this great physical and even greater spiritual inheritance, but he assures him, God is. going to be with you. God is going to be with you. And how important are those words going to be over the next 400 plus years as the people are enslaved generation after generation after generation? You see, friends, Israel's death is not going to mean that God's purposes have failed. But rather, God's purposes are going to continue to be fulfilled through his sons who had inherited the promises.

27:28Now, as we look at this passage in total and we think about the concept of adoption, I want to think about the spiritual reality of adoption for us in Christ because it's something that I don't think we reflect on often enough. A lot of you are familiar with Russell Moore. Russell Moore is the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. And he has done such a great job in that role. He's been a blessing not just to the SBC, but to Christians everywhere. And in 2009, Russell Moore wrote a book called Adopted for Life, which reflects on the Bible's important, often neglected teaching on the adoption of Christians through faith in Christ and what that means. And specifically, the book reflects on the fact that all believers are adopted into God's family. No one is born into God's family. Not Jews, not Gentiles. All of us are adopted. Look at what he says in his book.

28:30None of us likes to think we were adopted. We assume we're natural-born children with a right to all this grace, to all of this glory. We're ashamed to think of ourselves as adopted, because to do so would focus our minds on the gory truth that all of us in Christ, like my sons, whom he and his wife adopted, once were lost, but now we're found. Once we're strangers, and now we're children, once we're slaves, and now we're heirs.

29:04See, friends, most of us don't like to reflect on the fact that we've been adopted, but that's exactly what the Bible teaches. In God's Word, we learn that we were not born into God's family, we were adopted into God's family, and we learned that we were not adopted into God's family because of anything in us, contrary to so much teaching in the Christian church today. The Bible does not teach that God looked down the corridor of time and selected the most religious people, those who were most faithful in church attendance, those who had good qualities that he deemed were redeemable, whereas other people were irredeemable. The Bible teaches none of that. In fact, look at what the Bible does teach about all people in Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 through 3.

29:55And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once. Walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. You see, according to God's Word, what were we?

30:32We were children of wrath like the rest of mankind. We were not born into God's family because our parents were Christians, or because we were religious enough, or because we were born in America or any other country that has many Christians in it. The scripture teaches rather: if we are children of God, it is because we have been adopted by Him through faith in Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross. Look at what John 1, verses 11-13 say.

31:06He, that is Jesus, came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. You see, friends, Jesus first went to the physical descendants of Abraham. He first went to the Jewish people. But they didn't receive him.

31:44The Jewish people, on the whole, took one look at this carpenter's son from Nazareth, and they said, Not this way, my father. Not this way, my father. And so God's word says, but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. In other words, he adopted them not because they were born into the right family, but precisely because they weren't. They weren't born into the right family. You weren't born into the right family. I wasn't. No Jew, no Gentile was born into the right family. Everyone who is a member of God's family is a member of God's family because he adopted us through faith in Christ.

32:33And that means, as adopted children, we have all of the privileges, all of the rights, and yes, all of the responsibilities too, of members in the family of God. And so I just want to reflect on a few of those things as we close. Consider first some of the privileges that we enjoy: love and discipline. Look at Proverbs 3. My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline, or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.

33:15What about God's provision and protection? Look at Matthew 6. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? What about our promised inheritance? Look at Ephesians, or rather 1 Peter chapter 1. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

34:09And then think about our new identity in Christ. Look on the screen at Romans 8. So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 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. 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.

34:48So, friends, if you have received Christ by faith, then you have been adopted into God's family. And if you have been adopted into God's family, then all of these and many other privileges and blessings are yours. And yet we spend so little time, so precious little time, reflecting on those realities. We don't reflect often on those, and we don't reflect often on our responsibilities. Because if we are all members of God's family, as the word says that we are, then we have responsibilities to one another. As John writes in 1 John, not just to love one another in word and talk, not just to say good things about the local church, but to live out the commands to love by sacrificially serving one another.

35:36Some of the greatest ways that we do that are through participating in adoption, by adopting children into our families that need loving homes, by supporting those families who are in the process of adoption or who have adopted before, and in countless other ways. But we're called to love and serve one another as members of the same family. When one part suffers, all parts suffer. Suffer. When one part rejoices, all parts rejoice. We're called to bear the burdens and rejoice together as a family. And that's why much of the New Testament is calling us to these things and reminding us again and again that all of us who have put our faith in Christ have been adopted into God's family.

36:20And friends, if you're here today and you haven't received Christ by faith, it's critical that you understand that there is no other way to be adopted into God's family except through faith in Jesus. You are not baptized into God's family. You don't join a church and then become part of God's family. You don't do some religious works and become a part of God's family. You don't cut out certain sins in your life and then become part of God's family. The scripture says that the only way to be adopted into God's family is to repent of your sins and to put your faith in Jesus Christ, his sinless life, his death, and his resurrection for you. That is how the Bible says that we're adopted into God's family. And adoption into God's family is the greatest blessing that we receive in Christ. Let's pray.

37:40Father, what a privilege it is to be members of your family. I can only imagine the excitement that Joseph felt for his children, that the children felt when they were old enough to understand what they had received. What a blessing that adoption is. And God, we think so little on it. And it shows, it shows in the way that we relate to one another as Christians, not often as members of a family who are called to love and serve one another, but often as free agents that don't have really anything to do with one another.

38:26And so, God, I ask this morning that we would be reminded of both the privileges that we have as members of your family and the responsibilities that we have as members of your family. And I pray that we would be faithful to live in light of the reality that we are adopted sons and daughters of God. Father, I do pray for the families who have adopted and who are considering adoption. Would you give them wisdom and faith? Would you provide for them in every way? Help us. As a church body to support them, not just with our words, not even merely with our prayers, but with actions.

39:13God, we celebrate today fatherhood. As a country, this is a day that we set aside to reflect on the goodness of fathers, physical fathers, spiritual fathers. And we have so much to be thankful for here at New Life. I am grateful for the men of God who are a part of this church. I am thankful for the way that they challenge me to love and serve my own children, for the ways that they challenge me to lead my family spiritually, for the ways that they encourage me to have spiritual goals ahead of worldly goals for my kids. I pray a blessing on all the fathers here, and that you would help us to do this humanly impossible work of raising children, and specifically children who know and fear you. God, that's out of our hands.

40:15And so we pray for our kids today, too. We pray that they would know you and love you and serve you. We pray that they would be more excited than we are about you and what you've done. We pray that they would be more faithful than we are. And God, I pray for the fathers, or rather the men here, who long to be fathers. And you haven't given them that blessing, at least at this point. I pray that you would encourage them. And I pray that you would open their eyes to see all of the opportunities around them for them to be spiritual fathers to young men who need godly examples, godly role models.

41:03You've told us clearly in your word that marriage doesn't exist in heaven. Relationships will change. But the benefits of spiritual fatherhood and motherhood will last forever. And so help us to be faithful in that area. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.