As most of you guys know, I'm a carpenter by trade. That's the only job I've ever had, starting when I was about 14 years old, working summers for my dad and my uncle and going full-time when I got out of high school. I remember being fascinated with building. I loved watching studs become walls and joists become floors and rafters become roofs. I enjoyed the physical nature of the work and I enjoyed the satisfaction of the work after it was done. Of course, back then it was all brand new to me. It was all I thought about and it was all I ever wanted to do. I read books and practiced my trade, even at home when I wasn't working. Back then, you might say building was my passion. But for me, I think it was more than just seeing a product being built or even physically accomplishing that task. The part of building that I enjoyed more than anything else was the concepts of building that become the reasons that we do things and the reasons that we do things the way we do things. It was the theory behind the methods we used that intrigued me more than anything else. I didn't just want to know what to do. I wanted to know how to do things. And I wanted to know why we do the things that we do. This past week, we started building a new garage for a customer and I'm working with a brand new crew. These guys started for me a couple months ago, but this will be our first job together from frame to finish. One of them aspires to be a lead carpenter one day and his enthusiasm has almost breathed new life into me as a project manager. You might say I don't have the same passion I used to have about building. The newness has certainly worn off for me. I'm sure we can probably all relate to that to some extent. The more we do something, the more it takes to excite us. There aren't too many new techniques or building features that excite me anymore. But I'm finding that having a guy on the job who wants to learn and grow definitely does excite me. So on Wednesday, he asked me to teach him how to cut rafters. He didn't want to just put the roof together. He wanted to know how and why we do what we do in order to better understand the whole process. He wanted to understand how each part of the process impacts the next part. And he wanted to better understand why we do what we do and why each component of the roof is important. I think this is an important principle in learning. It is for me anyway. A robot can be programmed to do repetitive work. A monkey can also be trained to do repetitive work. But it takes a man or a woman with creativity and understanding to truly grasp a concept and learn to apply that concept to all the different variations that that task might demand from us. If you learn how to cut a rafter, That's fine, but somebody needs to read the plans and calculate the length and the angle and then measure it and mark it. Only then can the repetitive work of cutting and installing begin. A person needs to understand geometry and trigonometry. He needs to understand horizontal planes and vertical planes. He needs to understand loads and know how to carry those loads all the way from the foundation up. And he needs to have a grasp on these things long before he even begins to prepare the ground for concrete. And some of these things are complicated things, but they're part of the how and the why. And they must be understood. They help us understand the roles of each individual piece, and they help us to understand how each piece is dependent upon the next. Anyone can nail rafters together. Anyone can nail plywood to the rafters and nail shingles to the plywood. But a person who wants to understand what he's doing needs to understand both the how and the why. I believe the same thing could be said of our theology. And I think that's what this catechism we're studying helps to accomplish for us. It shows us more than bare facts. It shows us how one doctrine affects the next, and how each doctrine of redemption and of God's decrees are dependent upon each other. It's one thing to know that Jesus died for sinners. It's another thing to know how he died and why he died. It's one thing to know that Jesus was born of a virgin mother. It's another thing to know the how and the why. It's one thing to know that Jesus gave his elect a righteousness of their own. But how and why did God choose to do it that way? It's one thing to know that his blood washes us as white as snow. It's another thing to know the how and the why. You see, all of these things are things that a person can know easily. It's very easy to memorize these basic principles of the Christian faith. And at least in a surface way, it's easy to believe these things. But God wants us to understand these things as much more than bullet points. And that's why the Bible is so rich with information explaining the how and the why of redemption. And that's what we've been studying in our catechism's treatment of God's decrees. How and why did Christ die? How and why was he raised from the dead? How and why Did he work to live a sinless life for us? How and why was he born to a virgin mother? How and why does the Spirit effectually call us? How and why? It's important for us to understand the reasons for the hope we have and the purpose of God in offering us that hope. And I believe if we don't truly understand our faith, it can be easily taken away from us. Part of having a head knowledge of the Bible is knowing what Jesus did and what the Spirit did and what the Father did. But saving faith is understanding the how and the why and it brings us to another level of understanding entirely. It brings us to a knowledge of God, the one who accomplished it for us. Now we can have two different carpenters on a job One knows where the rafter goes. The other knows how he's going to support that rafter and why he does what he does, even before he digs the foundation. And he lays those supports in the ground before a single piece of lumber comes to the job site. That's because he understands the how and the why. He sees the whole picture. As Christians, we want more than just to know about our faith. We want to understand the foundation. And we want to see how the supports in the foundation support the walls, which supports the beams, which support the posts, which support the ridge, which supports the rafters. Our faith is just like a house. God's decrees in redemption are just like a house. They have hundreds of pieces that serve a purpose, supporting the next step and the next step and 10 steps ahead before we even get there. And we need to be able to look at our faith just like that. And I think that's what things like catechisms help us to do. They show us a cross-section of our theology. They show us a picture of the whole house and all the components that hold it all together. They show the support in the ground, and then the concrete, and the posts connecting to the floor, and then the walls, and the beams, and the ridge. All of it connects. And you can't remove any piece of it without the whole structure falling to the ground. And it's the same with God's decrees. And I think once a person sees all of the pieces doing their specific jobs, it's easier to understand the whole thing, right? The whole picture helps us to understand the individual parts. It's like the saying that says, be careful not to miss the forest for the trees. As part of our introduction this morning, I'd like to consider the trees of God's decrees in context so as not to miss the forest of redemption. Each week we consider another tree, but today I'd like to consider these things from a bit of a distance as we consider the whole forest. You'll see a diagram in your bulletin. It's a diagram of a cross-section of a house. And I like to use this in our study of God's decrees today. So notice the foundation at the very bottom. There's a concrete footing there that supports every doctrine in God's decrees in the Bible. And what is that? It's the sovereign will of God to accomplish his purposes, right? And what did we say that God's purpose was? Ephesians 1 and verse 10 said to gather all things together in one in Christ, right? This was question 10. What is effectual, what is God's decrees? So the foundation we see is this purpose of God to gather. And this will support everything that comes after it. The foundation of redemption is the sovereign will of God. Everything is built upon this first doctrine in God's decree. And so notice how this supports the next level of the house. How does God gather? Well, question 11 asks that question. How does God execute his decrees? How does he accomplish his purpose to gather all things? Well, he starts by building two posts, doesn't he? He's building upward. And these posts, we saw, are creation and providence. That was question 11. He creates and he provides. That's how he executes his decrees. In order to gather all things, God first had to create all things. That's why we see that his purpose to gather actually predates everything else. His purpose to gather didn't start after the fall. God wasn't surprised by the fall or by sin. He had a plan before the foundation of the world that actually included the fall. The fall was part of God's decree. Before he would gather his people, God would scatter his people. Same concept is repeated throughout the whole Bible. Think of the prodigal son. Think of Israel in the book of Hosea, scattered and then gathered, scattered and then gathered. That's a pattern in God's decrees and that's a pattern of redemption. But creation and providence are the posts that would support that next level, the level that would cause both separation and gathering. And that next level, if you look in your outline, is the covenant of works. God created people. That's the right post there. And then he determined to provide for those people. That's the left post. And the way he would provide for his creation was through a covenant of works. That's the beam that runs from post to post. God's decrees. He would gather by way of creation and providence with himself. And those two pillars brought his creation under a providential covenant where he would gather his people to himself. He was laying the groundwork for his gathering by first building the supports for the covenant of works. We studied that a couple months ago. Of course, we know that the covenant of works brought separation, didn't it? And so instead of that covenant providing eternal gathering, it caused eternal separation. But again, that was part of God's decree. He was using that covenant or that beam there to support another level up higher. He's planning ahead. He's building upward. He's revealing his plan. And so the covenant of works had a purpose, which was to support another level. And so on top of the covenant of works rests a post on one side, which is Adam, and a post on the other side, which is Christ. So two men stand upon the covenant of works. Adam stands on one side and Christ stands on the other. A person cannot understand the work of Christ without first understanding him as the better Adam. Both of them, according to God's decrees, would be charged with the same task. Both of them are to obey God and His law in exchange for life for their people. And both stand upon the covenant of works, which says, do this and live. Adam and Christ are two posts standing upon a covenant of works as part of God's decrees. One doctrine supports the next. Adam failed to accomplish his work. and we know that in that he died. Christ succeeded in his work and he lives on forever. The Bible says in Adam all die, in Christ all are made alive. So Adam and Christ are now pillars which both stand upon the great beam of the covenant of works. Both pillars stand, but pillars don't just stand there for no reason in a house, and they don't stand for no reason in God's decrees either. These men are carrying something above in God's decrees. God is still building upward. And so what rests upon these two men? If you look above, it's a new covenant. The new covenant, actually. The covenant of grace. And think about that. The covenant of grace requires two things, doesn't it? For grace to be necessary, the recipients of grace must be deemed too weak to accomplish God's purpose on their own, right? That's exactly what Adam did. His failure, we say, plunged mankind into sin and death. Sin has made man unable and unwilling to comply with God's law, and so Adam has become a pillar to support the covenant of grace. It's kind of an interesting thought, isn't it? Think about that. If you remove Adam, the covenant of grace falls. Adam is a necessary support. To believe in an ancient earth and to read the first chapters in Genesis as allegory is to tear down the whole house of God's redemption. The house cannot stand without this essential pillar, which is Adam. Adam, even in all of his dishonor, must stand in our theology because without Adam, there can be no grace. Adam establishes the need for grace. The fall was not an accident. The fall took us out of the covenant of works so that we might be joined to Christ in the covenant of grace. You see, God had a purpose in all of these things. In all of these things, we're working towards something that would come later and be supported by them. And so the covenant of grace rests, in part, upon Adam. Let's consider that other pillar now. That pillar is Jesus Christ and all of his work. As he accomplishes his father's will, As he serves as prophet and priest and king, he is supporting the covenant of grace as well. All of his obedience, all of his offices, all of his sufferings and all of his glory are to hold up that next great beam which is above it, which is the covenant of grace. Without him, the covenant of grace also falls. Without Adam's sin and the fall, there is no redemption. And without Christ to pay sin's debt and establish righteousness, there is no redemption. The covenant of grace rests upon Adam and Christ. Those were questions 16 through 31. You see, the catechism is teaching these things in such a way as to reveal the flow of God's design. And so we can see that God still requires obedience to the covenant of works. We all stand directly or indirectly, on the covenant of works. We're born into the covenant of works in Adam, in all of his dishonor, but in God's decrees, we see a way to climb to another level, a way to climb to a place of honor and leave Adam and his fallenness behind. Only those who have attached themselves to Christ can climb that ladder to the covenant of grace and stand upon him there. And so we see Christ standing upon the covenant of works, doing the Father's will, and securing life for himself and for his people. Do this and live, it says. And that's what he has done. He is the ladder that we climb to heaven. In Adam, I'll perish. In Christ, we have eternal life. Now, how does the work of Christ support the covenant of grace? Well, it supports grace because it becomes the gift which grace gives. Christ himself is that gift. And how does Adam support the covenant of grace? Well, he establishes the need for it. And so the covenant of grace we see requires a need for grace found in Adam and a source of grace found in Christ. Those two men are the pillars which support the new covenant. And the new covenant, the covenant of grace, now spans these two pillars and becomes another level as we work our way to the ridge of the house. God, in his decrees, is building upward. And then the next beam, this covenant of grace, supports another post. What did we find standing upon the covenant of grace in our study? We might call this post-effectual calling, right? God is still building upward. Once Adam and Christ have propped up the covenant of grace, it now must be applied to the individual human soul, doesn't it? Adam and Christ have supported the new covenant, but neither of their works are designed to apply that new covenant to individual souls. And so God is now able to place the work of the Spirit on top of the finished work of the New Covenant, finally now gathering all things together in one in Jesus Christ. One piece supports the next, right? And so on and so on. Just as a footing supports a post, and a post supports a beam, and a beam supports another post all the way to the ridge. And so the final post at the top of the house, the one that rests on all the work below it, is the work of the Holy Spirit in effectual calling. He takes everything that was secured and accomplished by Jesus Christ, and he applies it to his saints. He calls them and teaches them. He convinces us of our sin and misery. He enlightens our minds. He renews our wills. He persuades and enables us to embrace Christ. He works faith in us and he unites us to Christ. The work of the Spirit stands upon the finished work of Christ. That was the topic of our last message. Questions 32 through 34 are the final post. which brings redemption to the human soul. It brings everything below it. Everything which supports God's plan of redemption now supports the Holy Spirit's work, which brings redemption to men. This was all planned before the foundation of the world. Now think about effectual calling in terms of Adam and Christ again. You'll see in my diagram two arrows coming off from effectual calling. In Adam's column, we see the Spirit convincing us of our sin and misery. We might say that the Holy Spirit teaches us about that pillar, Adam, which carries one side of the new covenant, doesn't he? He teaches us of our sin and misery in Adam. We must understand that. We can't take Adam away from our theology. Adam really does support the New Covenant by establishing our need for it. And in Christ's column, we see the Spirit enlightening our minds, renewing our wills, persuading and enabling us to embrace Christ, working faith in us, and uniting us to Christ. The Spirit is teaching us of the work that actually supports us, that supports the new covenant. He shows us what we're standing upon. And so we stand as much on our depravity as we do on Christ's righteousness. That's why the cross is so important. It bridges the gap between Adam and Christ. It's at the cross that the fall and man's depravity meets the righteousness of God. A doctrine of redemption without both of these men cannot save us. A gospel message without law and grace together cannot save us. And so it's upon the cross that the Spirit is able to now teach us and apply these things to us in effectual calling. He reveals our need and he reveals our remedy. The Spirit's effectual calling becomes the last post in our building. And it supports one last thing in the theology of redemption, in the theology of God's decrees. Now, one last thing is the ridge beam all the way at the top of the house. In our study of God's decrees, we have reached the peak. This is the benefits of redemption. This was God's purpose in building the foundation in the first place. This week will be an introduction to the last section on the decrees of God. This is the benefits of redemption. Look at our diagram again. Architects call this a cross section of the building, by the way, or a building section. It shows the flow of the internal structure. The benefits of redemption rest upon effectual calling. Effectual calling rests upon the cross. and the covenant of grace. The covenant of grace rests upon Adam and the fall on one side and Christ and his righteousness on the other. And then we see Adam and Christ standing upon the covenant of works, which offers life for obedience. And the covenant of works rests upon the creation and providence of God. God created a world and a people. And he provides for his creation and governs all things to accomplish his will. And all of this rests on the foundation, which is God's decrees to gather all things together in one in Jesus Christ. I think we can all benefit by understanding the flow of God's plan of redemption. We don't want to be repetitive robots and monkeys. We want to understand the how and the why of God's redemption, right? We want to understand the mind of God as best we can in everything that he does. And if we study our theology, if we study these old catechisms alongside our Bibles, I think we'll begin to see the nuts and the bolts and the studs and the joists and the beams and the posts. And we'll see how each piece has its own significance in God's plan and how each piece works together to finally bring God's purpose to his people. Literally everything that happens in this life happens to accomplish what we find at the ridge of this house. The benefits of redemption. All of redemptive history has a purpose and it leads us here. There are eternal benefits of redemption that can only be true if everything supporting them are true. And that's going to be our topic for the next few weeks. Today, again, as our introduction. Please follow along as I read the 35th question in Benjamin Keech's Catechism. The question asks, what benefits do they that are effectually called partake of in this life? And the answer says, They that are effectually called do in this life partake of justification, adoption, sanctification, and the several benefits which in this life do either accompany or flow from them. That will be our topic this morning. All right, now before we begin, let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you again for the time that we have Together, we thank you, Lord, for gathering us on this beautiful Lord's Day. We thank you for the doctrines that we hold in our hands. More importantly, we thank you for your word that we hold in our hands. And we are all blessed to have multiple copies in our homes, a truth that doesn't hold true in all of human history for sure. And we are so blessed to know your will, to know your desires for our lives, to know that your purpose for us is to enjoy you and know you. And we ask you, dear Lord, to help these doctrines, these deep theological studies have an impact, not just on our minds, but on our hearts. Help us, dear Lord, to know you and to love you and to obey you in all that we do. Help us to glorify you in all that we do. And we pray that your spirit would teach us these things even today. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Okay, so we begin now the last section in our study of God's decrees. We're at the peak of the roof. Everything that came before is the structure that supports the new covenant system and it brings us to the pinnacle of God's ultimate purpose, which is found in the benefits of Christ's work. Literally every event and every situation in all of human history brings us to the point where the Holy Spirit applies the work of Jesus Christ to the individual souls of men, giving them the benefits of that saving work. So again, this section is now on the benefits of redemption. I'd like to split this question up into three sections this morning. First is the benefit of justification. Second is the benefit of adoption. And third is the benefit of sanctification. All three of these points are an introduction to these benefits. And then in the coming weeks, we'll consider each of them individually. Okay, first is the benefit of justification. This, of course, is one of the central themes of the Bible that was recovered, you might say, in the 16th century Protestant Reformation. A justification by faith alone is something that is central to biblical and Protestant Christianity. So let's first think about the meaning of this word justification. It's not a word we use every day, at least not in this kind of context. We in our day think about being justified in the sense of the dictionary definition. having our actions marked by a good or legitimate reason. This is probably the way we most often use the word, right? We say things like, I did what I did, whether it was good or bad, because I had to. It had to be done, might be something people say. I'm justified because of my good and legitimate reason for doing it. Justification might even be used in the sense of the end justifies the means. So if you do something bad in order to accomplish something good, you are justified in your own mind. But biblical justification has nothing to do with that. To be justified biblically is something much more objective. It's not a matter of opinions or circumstances. It's a matter of our standing before God. To be biblically justified means that we are declared righteous before God. All of God's decrees have brought us to this point. God is giving us a righteous standing so that we might be gathered to him. God gathers the righteous. And because none are righteous, God must first declare us righteous before he gathers us. That's the gospel. So justification is a matter of standing, not a matter of whether or not our actions are deemed good or legitimate. Notice that difference. It's a difference between grace and works, by the way. In Christianity, God is not looking for us to justify our every action. He's not going to call us to himself on the last day and say, I want you to make excuses for everything you did and give me your justification for your actions. It's actually the complete opposite. Just as we noticed in our drawing of the house, the covenant of grace assumes our depravity in Adam. It assumes that we cannot justify our behavior before God. Adam has established that need. None of our deeds are good or legitimate, and that's why we cling to Jesus Christ at the cross. Because our justification comes from Jesus, and that's because we have no other hope. And so Jesus has a righteousness that is given to us, if we're his, in the covenant of grace. Once again, Adam and Christ both hold up that covenant, don't they? One reveals the need for it, the other reveals the accomplishment of it. And so to be justified means that we are actually made righteous, not because our actions are legitimate, but because we are the recipients of the benefits of redemption. That kind of makes sense, right? Especially when we know what redemption is. It's the purchasing of a people for God with the blood of his son. That alone reveals something to us. We are bought. We're purchased. We were slaves of sin. And now we are bought by the king of righteousness. In order for a slave to be purchased, we need to recognize that we're not able to do anything for ourselves. That's Adam's pillar. It reveals our sin and misery. So everything in the work of redemption is done by parties other than ourselves. There is a party selling us and a party buying us and we are not part of those negotiations. We're just the thing being bought and sold. That's redemption. Jesus is buying us. So when we think about being justified, it has nothing to do with the slave justifying his good intentions to his master, right? No, because no one is asking him to justify himself or his behaviors. He is a passive person here, mostly because he is unable to justify himself. So instead, the slave, that's you and me, who owns nothing, including himself, and so has nothing at all to offer, must be the recipient of justification, not the source of it. And that fits perfectly with the biblical account. Romans 8 and verse 30 says, whom God did predestinate, them he also called, and whom he called them he also justified, and whom he justified them he also glorified. This is the work of God in effectual calling. God calls, God justifies, God glorifies, and he declares us righteous. Now before we move on, let's consider what this doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that suddenly we are perfect. It also doesn't mean that suddenly the slave has some kind of virtue in himself to maintain that righteousness. He's righteous, but he's still a sinner with no righteousness of his own. That's an important thing to think about, and there's no exceptions to that. Every saint, every believer is righteous, and yet every believer is righteous only in the sense that they are declared righteous by God through Jesus Christ. They are counted as righteous. So that's why there should be no self-righteousness in Christianity. We are not better than others in the sense that we're some kind of sinless race now. Instead, we are given a standing which is good. We are called good on account of Jesus and his perfect righteousness alone. It's an imputed righteousness. So it doesn't mean we are suddenly perfect. What this does mean, however, is that our righteousness cannot be removed. This is really good news. because it has nothing to do with our own works, good or bad. Nothing we can do can improve or hurt our standing before God. It is Jesus' righteousness that gives us our hope, and his alone by faith. We cannot improve our standing, we cannot improve our position before God, because we are counted perfectly acceptable already in Christ. The last thing we could ever want is to be justified by our own works. We're too imperfect. Then our standing before God would go up and down like a roller coaster, depending on the day we're having. I think we can all probably understand and relate to that. Imagine a righteousness that was dependent on you or me. When we attend the means of grace, we would feel righteous. When we sinned, we would lose that feeling of righteousness. Up and down we'd go. Up and down. And that would be our experience. The Roman Catholics have this view of justification. That's why Catholics are often paranoid about sin and superstitious about repentance and their own works. They believe in something called infused righteousness. A righteousness that is dependent upon man's attendance to it. We believe in something called imputed righteousness. That's a righteousness that we receive from Christ alone. We are judged according to his righteousness, not ours. Thanks be to God for that. A close friend of mine passed away not long ago. And as he was considering his own mortality, the only thing that gave him hope was the belief that the good in his life outweighed the bad. He was a Roman Catholic. He believed in heaven and hell and he believed in Jesus and his sacrificial deaths and almost everything else that we believe here. But he had a tragically flawed view of justification and righteousness. He was expecting a judgment where the good and the bad would be placed upon the scales. That's infused righteousness and that's a really scary doctrine. That's not the promise of Christianity. The promise of Christianity is that our judgment will be a judgment which simply declares us righteous. That's our hope. And the only way that is possible is if our righteousness has nothing at all to do with us. And that's the benefit of justification. And that is the benefit of imputed righteousness given to us in Christ. How about adoption? Another benefit of redemption is adoption. Adoption is another word that has been used quite differently in our day than it was in biblical times. Oftentimes when we think about adoption, we think about something legal, right? Something where people get vetted and then they get put on a list and then the courts give them legal guardianship over children who are not theirs biologically. We view adoption more as a process than as a change of position for the child being adopted. What do I mean by that? In our fallenness and in the modern secular understanding of adoption, even the most loving parents will never consider that child to be fully and completely theirs. That's a limitation of ours as modern people and as fallen people. Let me give you an example. when white parents adopt a black child. That child is considered an adopted child by every passerby, and even by the well-meaning members of that family. There's no way around that. There's something about our view of adoption that is always separating the adopted child from the biological child, even if it's subconscious. To overcome this, people will oftentimes apply to be paired with children that look like them in order to overcome this undeniable reality. But even that doesn't work. Here's another example. There's actually some prominent people in so-called Christian circles who teach that there's danger in adoption because an adopted child's unknown inherited sin, generational sin, might come into your household. Think about that for a moment. This reveals another wrong understanding of adoption. It views adoption as the bringing in of a foreign body that we need to be cautious of. That's not biblical adoption. First of all, we know that there is no inherited sin, which is any worse than the inherited sin of Adam. And we all possess that. That's undeniable. So unintentionally adopting the child of a witch or the child of a horrific and demonic couple should not be part of our thinking in adoption. God can redeem all circumstances and all people, and true adoption, like justification, is a matter of standing, not genetics. It's interesting, I was listening to a sermon where the pastor even said something about trials. with adopted children. He said in his message that even the most well-meaning parents would often view the poor behavior of their adopted kids as a sign that maybe they shouldn't have adopted. That's also not adoption. Biblical adoption doesn't take into account the potential evil that the child might bring into the home, and it doesn't look at hard trials with the child as any different with his adopted child versus his biological child. This demonstrates again how adoption in our day is full of subconscious misunderstandings. Both biological and adopted children have the capacity for great evil, no matter what their genes are. And both children have the capacity to fall away and put the family through awful and unbearable trials. That's what happens as a parent. You are subjecting yourself to that possibility. But when a biological child turns his back on his parents, you see society saying very different things than when an adopted child turns his back on his adoptive parents. I say all this to say that we have a problematic view of adoption in a lot of ways, a view that needs to be dismantled before we can understand God's adoption toward us. Adoption isn't just a process and it isn't just something legal. Instead, it's actually very similar to justification. It's something that is done by a person with means and power towards someone else who has no means and no power. Think of the slave again. He doesn't participate in the transaction of his redemption at all, right? He is totally passive. He receives redemption. And because the basis of his redemption is the righteousness of Christ, he also can't lose it. He has received a new standing before God. The same should be thought of when we think of adoption. That's why adoption is one of the most beautiful images of our redemption that we're given in scripture. When God adopts us, we are not outsiders in the family of God brought in. We are fully accepted and we are never thought of by saints or angels or God himself as anything but the true children of God. There are no biological sons of God alongside adopted sons of God because we are all sons and daughters of God, all with equal standing. And so even the son of God himself, the true son, calls us brothers and sisters. So adoption is more than a legal term. It's a complete acceptance into the household of God without a single exception. There's never a time when the adopted child should feel anything less than that of a biological child of the Most High God. Because in the mind of God, there is no distinction between a biological son and an adopted son. That's a benefit of redemption. That's at the pinnacle of the purposes for every single thing we see in our house diagram of God's decrees. all things happen so that we might receive justification and adoption, and all of this so that there would be no distinction between the biological and the adopted sons and daughters of God. Ephesians 1 in verse 5 says, God has predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will. This word for adoption in Ephesians 1.5 means the placing as a son. This is just like justification. It is a placement. It is a standing. We are declared just and we are declared sons. This is part of redemption. Once a son, always a son. And once a son, you are also heir to the entire kingdom of God. There's no levels of adoption or levels of sonship with God. There is no distinction. Just like Jesus, and right alongside Jesus, we are sons and daughters. We will inherit the world, the Bible says. In biblical times, this adoption would mean something permanent and lasting. We have a new and permanent standing as children of the King. That's adoption. We cannot lose it. and the benefits of it cannot be lessened and not by the works of the devil or by our own sin. We are fully secured in the family of God by adoption. These things should hopefully help in our walk to lessen our anxiety in this life. We are secure in Jesus. We cannot fall away. Our last point this morning is the benefit of sanctification. This is similar again. This is a standing. We stand before God as righteous in our justification, we stand before God as his children in our adoption, and we stand before God as holy in our sanctification, meaning we are set apart as special to him and for his own glory and our own good. We are the beneficiaries of his goodness. 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 30 says, but of him You are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. This is of Him, meaning it is the work of God that we are sanctified. We see that in the diagram of the house again. This is part of effectual calling. And sanctification is part of our experience as Christians in a couple different ways. First, we are called out of the world. That's what sanctification means, to be set apart or called out. That's what holy means also. So when we are effectually called by the Holy Spirit, we are being sanctified. We're being set apart for a holy use by God, which means that being saved, in the general sense, means the same thing as being sanctified also. Being justified and adopted are both types of sanctification also. There's a lot of overlap between these three words here. But sanctification also means that we're made holy. So we're set apart for a good use by God and we're also made holy. Hopefully every day we're made more and more holy. This happens in sanctification when the Spirit teaches us and subdues us and renews our minds to know what is good and to do what is good. We're also given a new will to desire good things. That's also sanctification. We're made more and more like Jesus. In our desires and in our mannerisms, we begin to know what's good and desire what's good and do what's good. We become godly. That's sanctification also. So sanctification means we become set apart with a new standing and we also become more holy outwardly and inwardly. These are some of the benefits of redemption. Again, this is just an introduction. And Lord willing, I'd like to go into these things in more detail in the coming weeks. But as we close, I think God has revealed something for us in his decrees. Everything we've seen in our study of God's decrees has revealed God's careful attention to detail in making the way for us to take part in eternity. That has been his purpose in all things, to gather and to redeem, to bless us with his goodness forever. And we have seen that all of these catechism questions on his decrees have been building upward to the ridge of the house and to the pinnacle of the mountain, where we find all of that careful planning and work finally applied to the saint. We see the benefits of everything that was built under us and everything that supports us. The gathering that was determined in the foundation of His decrees is finally executed when the Holy Spirit joins us and unites us to Christ. It is there that we become the beneficiaries of God's decrees. And it is there that we find a place so protected and so unmovable that we cannot possibly lose our standing. The judgment is no longer a thing to fear for the Christian because we are justified. Abandonment is no longer a thing to be feared by the Christian because we have received a perfect and unchanging adoption. And life, a life of shame and regret is not a thing to fear for the Christian because we have been called away from shame and regret and into holiness in our sanctification. We have received the benefits of everything accomplished in God's decrees. And none of this is of us. Therefore, none of it can be destroyed or altered or lost. That's the beauty of this structure we stand upon. God has laid a perfect foundation and he has built a strong house for us, one that is sure to stand against the devil and sin and the flesh and the world and every other enemy of God that would tear us down from it. Matter of fact, God has even used his own enemies to gather us to himself. That is the decree of a sovereign God. I pray today that each of us might receive Christ and the benefits of his glorious work, and may we all love him and enjoy him in all that we do, and more and more each and every day. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you again for this introductory question into the benefits of redemption. We thank you, dear Lord, for those who came before us who set these things up in such an architectural way, for us to see them with clarity and understand the methods and the means that you've used to secure eternal life for us. We thank you, dear Lord, that we see your wisdom even in our separation as it brought us to your gatherings. And we thank you, dear Lord, that we can even see suffering and the fall and sin and death all having its place in building this house, which redeems and gathers your elect. Lord, you are wise beyond our comprehension. You are glorious beyond anything we can even imagine. We pray, dear Lord, that you would reveal that glory to us day by day, and that one day we might stand in your glory for all of eternity. and enjoy your presence as we hear your plans and your purposes as you planned them from the beginning. And we just pray, Lord, that that wonderful thought would take us through day by day as our minds are set upon that wonderful celestial city and that house that you've built for us there. So we thank you again for all that you are. We thank you for the blessing of this day. And we ask your blessing upon the remainder of our worship And we pray these things in Christ's name, amen.