Let me start off by saying thank you. I want to thank Brother Tom for inviting me, for the church for inviting us, and for treating us so well. It's been an indescribable blessing to us to have been here this weekend. We've heard of y'all, and now we got to meet you, and it's a blessing to get to know your brothers and sisters in Christ who you've not met before. I'm going to start off by just telling you sort of the personal story of our family. I mean, there's a reason Brother Tom asked me speak on adoption. I want to read the text first, not because the text isn't important, but because I tell my students in homiletics, the best part of every sermon is the text, so get to it. So, let's read Galatians chapter 4, starting at verse 3. Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world, but When the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore, Thou art no more a servant, but a son, and if a son, an heir of God through Christ." Joy and I were married back in March 2002. It was several years before we learned we'd be unable to have children. And in truth, this didn't stress me too much. I always liked the idea of adoption. In fact, I frequently said we needed to do that because the world doesn't need to see the combined genetics of me and the woman silly enough to marry me. We were faced with the first question adoptive parents have to ask themselves. Do you think you can love someone who isn't blood related? Well. We loved each other. That's a pretty convincing argument. God loves us. And he's the source of all love. And that's an even better argument. I can tell you, in retrospect, there was really no need for us to be concerned about that, although it's something that adoptive parents always ask themselves. Love isn't based on biology. Love is based on the creator of biology. Love isn't expressed through what's natural. Love is expressed through God, who is supernatural. And we've come to understand, much later, we were worried about how much love we would have. Love's not contained in some bucket that God gives you so that you can divvy out little amounts of it guardedly. God gives us an ever-flowing fountain, freely blessing those who find it. So we decided, yes, we could love a child that wasn't ours by blood. But there are generally three options available to those seeking adoption. You can go through an adoption agency, which charges for their service and places children according to the wishes of the birth mother. Every one of these options has positives to it. In that case, the children are the most mentally and physically and emotionally healthy. They're also generally newborn babies. They're children of women who've made the hard decision to give their child up for adoption instead of having abortion. And I applaud those women. They deserve our support. Unfortunately, the cost of adopting that way in the United States is about $25,000 to $40,000. Joy and I had, according to my careful calculations, about $5. We were a little short. The second way you can adopt is you can adopt overseas. China, Russia, Ethiopia are prime targets for that. The children in those cases are often slightly older, and many times they face some physical and emotional challenges. A lot of couples choose this method. The big positive of that is it's very unlikely that birth mom is going to come find you having changed her mind. And she's over on the other side of the world. Unfortunately, the cost for that can also be quite high. $40,000 or so is a common target. In reality, folks I've talked to said it can go well past that with plane tickets and, frankly, the need to bribe officials in those countries to do what they're supposed to do. We knew that there would be people willing to help us. But after prayerfully considering our options, we didn't feel like we could ask for money to adopt a child from overseas. And we knew there were children here that were in need of adoption. I don't say that to criticize anyone who's done it that way, only to say that's not the way God led us. The third option is to try to adopt through foster care. But there are a lot of frightening prospects that come along with that. Children in foster care very often are not infants. The foster care system is filled with children who are facing serious emotional, physical, mental problems because of abuse of parents. And also, that system is always geared toward returning those children to their parents, fixing whatever the problem was, and putting the children back with the parents. I mean, we heard horror stories of children in foster family for years and years, and then removed and placed back home, which was never home. I'm not going to pretend that foster care is the path that God has for everyone. Actually, it is a path toward adoption that Joy and I have decided is a fitting replacement for the physical labor that she got to miss. You still go through labor. It's just a different kind of labor. It's time, it's heartache, it's uncertainty. But God can comfort through uncertainty. Would we be able to give that child back if called upon to do it? We prayed that would never be necessary. And praise God, while there were times where we were certain it was close to that, God spared us from that trial. But if you are considering foster parenting, let me ask you this. Suppose a caseworker from the state showed up at your door in the middle of the night tonight with a child holding it out to you saying, this child needs a home for six months. Would you close the door? Very few Christian couples I know would. The only difference in that scenario and the situation you're in now is that that child isn't at your door. Listen, the child still exists. There's still a need. We just allow ourselves the convenience of pretending that there's not a need because they aren't on our doorstep. Joy and I like to joke about what we call it's the sovereignty of God trump card. You have to throw it out there. There comes a time when all the possibilities, the concerns, the fears that overwhelm you, and the only option available is just sovereignty of God trump card. It beats everything. And here's how that card works. Even while we were debating and preparing, unbeknownst to us, God brought a little girl into the world. In some white sanitary hospital room, this child was born into a world much darker than her surroundings. Cocaine addicted, immediately placed in foster care because of a birth mother with a long rap sheet, The most delicate way to explain our birth mother is to say that pregnancy is an occupational hazard. I hope you understand what I'm saying. Seven months later, seven months in which God had been at work preparing us, a caseworker calls my office and says, we have a little girl. Can't promise how long she'd be with you. She might be with you two weeks. She might be with you forever. Do you want her? The caseworker offered me some time to think about it. I said, I didn't need it. She said, maybe you want to talk to your wife. She didn't know about the sovereignty of God trump card. We'd put the future in his hands, asked him to bring us a child, and we're already determined that when we got that call, the answer was yes. We were going to have a baby. A baby is on its way. We didn't get nine months. We got about 45 minutes. arrived in the back of a caseworker's car. We were handed all of her earthly possessions, which consisted of a little trash bag full of dirty clothes. We loved her as soon as the caseworker opened the door and said, this is Kenija. She didn't love us. I want you to understand that. She didn't love us. She was emotionless. She didn't laugh. She didn't cry. Imagine a seven-month-old child put in a stranger's arms and left in a stranger's house, and there's no tears. There's no laughing. There's no anything. She hadn't got the emotional and physical attention she needed for the first seven months of her life. She did not see us as parents that would take care of her because she had no concept of parents or being taken care of. But there was this watershed moment that happened weeks later. I would get into the habit of walking into the room after a day of work and saying, hello, baby. She came in one time after work, and Kenanju was sitting there on the floor, faced away from me. And I said, hello, baby. And her arms just started flailing. And she was excited. And she was bouncing up and down because she heard my voice. And she knew my voice. She knew me. She knew she was mine. And she was happy about it. She was feeling for the first time we could see her. Wasn't long after getting Kenijah that we learned there was a baby sister on the way. Same birth mom, pregnant again. We had several times, we had met her many times as we had had to take Kenijah for supervised visits. We knew her. She assured us that this new baby was going to look just like Kenijah. We were surprised. Cora from the hospital, actually meeting birth mom at the hospital, taking her directly from birth mom's arms. The mix of emotions in seeing a broken mother like that, but at the same time, getting a new baby is something that I don't even know how to express. Let me just say, as a foster parent or as an adoptive parent, you have a strange mix of emotions. You're frustrated and even angry that a parent could do things that would put a child in danger, but at the same time you look at her and say, she's brought the child into the world that I love. Please show compassion and share the gospel with them. That's what they need. Struck as we keep seeing the foster system try to fix birth parents. We have, in God's word, the one thing that really will fix them need to share it with them. Cora, because we got her right when she was born, she showed many more of the effects of drug addiction than we saw in Kenijah. In reality, here's this infant, three days old, suffering cocaine withdrawals. A little body shook tremendously for hours. We would bundle her up in what we like to call a baby burrito, just tight as you could possibly do, and hold her because it brought some peace and some relief. The Lord saw us through those trials and many more. The first adoption day we got was just two years after getting Kenijah. We were able to both adopt her and Cora. Folks, that is blazing fast for the foster care system. It is unheard of fast. Caseworkers were amazed. Joy and I went, sovereignty of God trump card. I will say of that experience, though, in adoption, as adoptive parents, you get to stand in a courtroom sworn before God to tell the truth and asked to consider, are you truly committed to parenthood? Unfortunately, nobody does that for biological parents. Biologically, it is often committed or not, ready or not, here they come. Adoption offers a kind of introspection about your preparedness and your commitment that others don't get. A little over a year of familial bliss passed. And we heard birth mother was pregnant again. This time, she insisted she was going to keep the baby. But the state was determined that she shouldn't. The state was right. We didn't know that Maya had come into the world until about a week after she was born. Birth mom had done some legal finagling to try to keep Maya's existence a secret. But Maya was found with the people she was put with, removed from another dangerous situation. and placed in our home as a foster child. Since she was a foster child, mom still had legal rights for supervised visits. Let me just say as a side note, the visits with the older girls, they never do away with those visits. Even when she went to prison, we got to take our children on visits. You've just not lived until you take your children to prison to visit their baby mama. But this time, it didn't matter that we lived almost three hours away, because I'd taken pastoring of a small church in Illinois. Every Tuesday while I worked, Joy would pack up baby Maya, drive three hours, spend one hour there in a very uncomfortable supervised visit, drive three hours back home. I went along on the first one. By this time, if you've looked at my children, you may have figured out our birth mother of the girls is Caucasian. Birth fathers are what we would describe maybe as various. I like to joke we're an Asian child short of our own sitcom. At the first visit for Maya, birth mom was joined by birth dad who was a very dark African-American man. I only mention that because Maya, if she was any more Caucasian, would be transparent. Clearly, something was not right. That man would try to obtain custody of Maya on behalf of birth mom. The problem is, as you start going through that legal process as a foster parent, you have zero right to representation legally. as a foster parent. You go into court, and you are allowed to go to the court because you're in custody of a child who is part of that court system. You go into court, and there is an attorney for birth mom. There is an attorney for birth dad. There is a state's attorney for the state. There is an attorney for the caseworker. There is even an attorney for the baby called a guardian ad litem. There is no attorney for foster parents. Praise God, we had the perfect advocate on our side. We decided to take Maya to a hearing in an earthly sense, having no idea whether it would do any good. But we prayed, trusted that God. I looked at Joy, and I said, God's here. We're sitting in this courtroom. There's all these people excluded. God's here. The bailiff told us we could sit. But if the baby fussed, we would be excused. Bless little Maya's heart. She started fussing and got the judge's attention. I did not pinch her, I promise. I can see the judge's eyes go from Maya to birth dad, to Maya, to birth dad, and finally almost see a light go on over the judge's head. You can only think of that passage, out of the mouth of babes, God perfected praise. It wasn't long after that we were able to adopt Maya as well. In truth, that is a very short retelling of the challenges we faced as God formed our family. But even in that, our experience is abnormal. We were greatly blessed by God to be able to adopt as easily as we did. I wouldn't pretend that all foster parents, all adoptive parents are going to experience similar successes or similar failures, only that in our experience in trusting God, it was rewarded. All that's to say, when Brother Tom asked me to preach this topic, I knew why. It's sort of obvious when you look at our family that adoption is something that's near and dear to us. I just want you to understand, in Galatians 4, it's impossible to come to a passage that we just read and proclaim the spiritual wonders of adoption of lost sinners into God's family without ever making those spiritual truths relate to the physical world around us. I believe we do a disservice to Scripture when we try to separate the theological and the practical that way. The more we look at the Word of God, the more we'll find we cannot separate those things. They are inseparable within the nature of God Himself. On the practical side, when it comes to adoption, God doesn't just show a spiritual concern for orphans, He reveals a genuine practical concern for their earthly good. God calls Himself the Father of the fatherless in Psalm 68.5. He consistently made in His law back in the Old Testament the requirement for His people to treat kindly widows and the fatherless. The law even demanded the means by which the community would provide for the fatherless. In Exodus 22, he proclaims, and this is a paraphrase, those practical revelation of God's feelings are outpouring of his theological interest in the spiritually orphaned. He sets his love on sinners, he redeems them, and gives them the spirit of adoption so that they'll cry, Abba, Father. He proclaims they're no longer slaves, but they're sons. Sons of God and joint heirs with Christ. Imagine, joint heirs with the one who the writer of Hebrews says is the heir of all things. In his spiritual fatherhood, it says of God in Ephesians 3.15, that in him the whole family in heaven and earth is named. So astounding is His love for the spiritually orphaned that the Apostle John exclaims, Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God. How can we take the practical and separate it from the spiritual? I don't think we can. Think of it this way. We worship a God who not only adopts and endorses adoption, but was himself adopted. Joseph has to be recognized as the adoptive father of Jesus. The world recognized it when it said of Jesus, isn't this the carpenter's son? Mary recognized it when she goes and finds 12-year-old Jesus in the temple. And what does she say? Your father and I have sought you sorrow. God Himself recognized it when He sent an angel to Joseph and said, don't put Mary away, because what did the angel say? She shall bring forth a son, and you will call his name Jesus. We can't separate the spiritual and the theological when it comes to adoption. the practical and the spiritual sides of it go together. We worship a God who adopts, who was adopted, who approves of adoption. And if it's not separated in God's revealed Word, it shouldn't be separated in our practice either. In our text in Galatians, Paul has been telling the churches but that they had been set free from slavery because Jesus purchased them from the slave market of sin. And not only does He redeem us, does He set us free from slavery, but He sets us free in order to make us sons. Look again at verse 5. To redeem them that were under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons. God the Father sent God the Son so that He would purchase slaves and bring them into the family of God and give them a status as full heirs of the family. We're being conformed to the image of God's Son as we're brought into the family by that Son. He is our loving older brother Jesus. This is how John's gospel describes the work of Jesus. John, in his gospel, is particularly interested in the idea of being born again. But I think the idea of being adopted in the family is also found in his gospel, as he introduces Jesus and says things like, as many as received them, to them gave he the power to become the sons of God. Folks, that requires a plan and a purpose based in God, not in us. I honestly don't know how an Armenian preacher can preach the doctrine of adoption into God's family. I don't know of a comparison that makes it more clear that this is about what God has done for us because He chose to do it. He had a plan. He had a time for that plan. He sent the means to accomplish that plan. As a matter of fact, we're about to see we didn't even know it was happening. Later on, in verses 8 and 9, Paul talks about how we didn't know God, but in verse 9, he says, now we know God. And Paul almost has to stop himself and make sure you don't get credit for that. He says, after that you've known God, or rather are known of God, because that's the source of our knowing. Your knowing God isn't based on some personal realization know Him, but on God's divine determination to have a relationship with you and to adopt you into His family. Ephesians 1.5 pulses God has predestinated us into the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will. Your status as a child of God is based on God looking out at the slave market and saying, that's who I want. Making the choice, making the purchase through the work of his son and adopting you into his family. I think Paul might use adoption as an example exactly because adoption is a sacrificial choice. It costs something. The one adopting has to be determined to cover that cost, to make the choice to have a child in their family. Look, when Joy and I decided to adopt, it wasn't because we thought it was going to give us some free time. Well, it's going to make life easy. I'm sure any of you who have had children know that's not the case. There's a sacrifice, the individual's finances and freedom and personal desires that those get placed on the back burner because, you know, the children's best interest becomes very prominent. That's why Paul begins by showing us as slaves. The price demanded for our freedom is a price that had to be paid in order to have our status as slaves changed. God didn't adopt us without first paying the price that was required to adopt us. What a price was required for you. The expense for his adopted sons cost him the life of his only begotten son, laid down his life for our salvation. The debt paid by Jesus is far greater than the debt any family has ever paid to adopt a child. But even so, Paul says, God sent forth his son. That's just the first step in what God did. He sent His Son to redeem us and to show He loves us, and then God sends forth His Spirit so that we would know and we would experience that love. Verse 6, "...because you are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your heart, crying, Abba, Father..." Look, there's a lot of good stuff. I don't want you to miss the first very positive assertion in that verse 6. Because you are sons. You are, in God's mind, already sons. God has sent His Son to redeem you so that He would adopt you. The description Paul is giving is you don't even know it yet, and God sees you as a son. God knows. Because you are sons. predetermined to love and to adopt you into his family. Years ago, when we first told some people our plans, I had a couple of folks who were pretty close to me respond negatively to it. They were worried we'd get a bad kid. What they said is, you know, there's bad blood. Bad blood is what they called it. They were all for having natural children, which really made me wonder, did they know me in joy at all? In Ephesians 2, verse 3, the apostle Paul says, we were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. Getting a bad kid is sort of the point, isn't it? God didn't adopt you because he found some precious, cute little bundle on his doorstep one morning. What did he adopt when he adopted you? He took a rebellious child, a hateful child, an obnoxious and ugly child. You want to talk about bad blood, folks, we've got bad blood. In truth, that bad blood comment was a veiled statement of racial prejudice. Let me just say, as a side note, the kind of differences you see in our family, those are also inherently existent in adoption as well. Back when we took our foster parenting class, there was this man in the class. This man and the woman in the class, they said they were Christians. They wanted to adopt. They wanted to adopt a child who was an infant, less than six months old, was white, and was a boy. It's like, you are out of your mind. That is not the expression of Christian love. I want to adopt if I can find somebody who's just like me. The perfect and holy God adopted a sinful child when He took me. It is as if He looked down and He chose the exact opposite of Him. I've had people wondering, frankly, I've wondered about our suitability to adopt kids who don't look like us, folks. Our family is just an insignificant group of depraved sinners. We've got everything in common. It was God who spanned the greatest social and moral gulf when he adopted, when he reached down and rescued you and me who were more different from him than any child you will ever find is different from you. God sent His Son in verse 4. God sends His Spirit in verse 6. And while He sent forth His Son into the world to die for sinners, He sends forth His Spirit into the hearts of those sinners in order to confirm for us, to let us know that we've been adopted into His family. God sends the Spirit into our hearts. There is within the heart of every adopted child of God the Spirit which tells us in our hearts, we belong to Him. Folks, that is awesome. Paul says in Romans 8.16, the Spirit also bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. He says here in Galatians 4.6, Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Folks, the rest of the world does not connect with God this way. Just the reality that you feel an intimate connection with God is evidence that the Spirit of God has revealed in your heart that He is your Father. It is a confirmation of your sonship. God sent forth his son that you would be purchased from the slave market and adopted into his family. And he sent forth his spirit so that you would know you were a son and that you would cry out to him, Abba, Father. Remarkable little word there, Abba. It's just the Aramaic word that means father. So essentially, Paul says we cry out, Father, Father, in two different languages. multilingual infants. That's normal. It's possible that Paul's using that word because it is a child-like word. It's a baby talk kind of sound. Abba. I mean, you can hear an infant saying that. And if that's the case, what he's saying is you've been made a child. The Spirit lets you know you're a child. You even sound like you're a child. Most likely, Paul is looking back, though, to the words of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane when he used the same word in prayer to God. Jesus uses that word, Abba, even though most people wouldn't. The word Abba is far too familiar of a term for it to be used by Jewish men in prayer. It's akin to saying, Papa or Daddy. And I think the understanding is that we're not given some second-class status as adopted children. Paul says in Romans, we've been given the spirit of adoption. He says in Galatians, we're given the spirit of His Son, the very Son of God who cries out to His Father, Abba, Father. We've got that spirit within us that we look at God the Father, and we will cry out, Abba, Father. The purpose of that Spirit is to give us assurance that we're sons, to know that we're adopted into His family. No doubts about whether or not we're the children of God. And that makes sense in an earthly realm, too. I mean, it's just not conceivable that our three little girls are going to grow up of thinking of themselves as orphans, until the day we show them adoption papers, and suddenly they go, oh, well, I guess you're my father. Oh, there's something within them that causes them to know it, even before they could understand it. You could have asked an eight-month-old Conigio, who's your daddy? And she wouldn't have been able to answer it. But if I walk into the room and say, hello, baby, and she hears my voice, you know in her heart she knows. You can ask those girls what makes them my children, and they will not talk to you about a judge hitting a gavel. They won't point to some piece of paper. They will know in their hearts that they're my children because they can come and call me daddy. Even so, the Spirit has been sent into our hearts to cause us to cry, Abba, Abba. We've been adopted. I know in your church there are those who are adopted, and those who have adopted, and there's those who are foster parenting. Folks, that is a beautiful work, beautiful picture of the work of Jesus on our behalf. This is a family conference. But in God's family, what do we have? The family of God, as it will exist throughout eternity, is made up of a kingdom full of rescued children. That is what God has done for you. And as His children, we are called on to be imitators of God. It behooves us to show God's love for His adopted family by embracing adoption ourselves. And when we do it, it will show the self-sacrificing love of God for the children who need it. Spiritually speaking, what hope did you have if God hadn't adopted you into His family? Practically speaking, the children who are out there and are in need, what hope do they have if someone doesn't adopt them into their family? You know, while little babies are adorable, but every passing year, they become less adorable and so less adoptable. And eventually, they'll reach maturity, and they'll exit the foster care system ill-equipped to live in the world. A lot of times, they'll join the military. Many more times, they'll end up in group homes or on the street. Young girls and boys alike make the mistake of relying on the first man who shows up and offers to give them a meal. And then immediately, that man turns around and sexually abuses them and relieves them of the notion that there is anybody out there who actually cares. Suicide rate for those young people is exceedingly high. What hope did you have? What hope do they have? Perhaps if the opportunity for adoption isn't available, the child won't even live to be placed in a foster care home. Look, we know that abortion is murder. For many girls who are pregnant, adoption is the only viable option. And it is long past time Christians who speak against abortion stand up and embrace adoption with whole hearts. Otherwise, what we're saying is, you make sure that child comes into the world, but don't make me have anything to do with it. We ought to have something to do with it. I know that adoption and fostering is not the calling of God on every family. But you ought to at least prayerfully consider whether it's God's calling for yours. And if you find that God is not leading you to foster or adopt, that doesn't change the fact that as part of God's family, as someone who's been adopted into God's family yourself, you are at least called on to support those who do go out. Can your church have some dialogue about the way to support foster and adoptive parents? Can you financially support a missionary like Nathan Long, who is up in the detention centers and group homes in Cleveland, Ohio, specifically ministering to fatherless children? And you start a foster or adoptive support group, which helps address some of these very specific challenges that are faced in the legal system and the sort of emotional drain of a constant parenting ministry. When you think about somebody's ministry, when you think about my ministry, I get up here and I preach. An hour later, if you're lucky, I'm done. Foster and adopting is a ministry, and it's never done. There's not a break. Can you register with the state as a respite foster family? That is not one that is looking to adopt and not one that's going to take a child for long term, but one who will take a child for a week or a weekend or a day in order to relieve some of the pressure from those who are taking it long term. Can you make sure there's pregnant mothers that know adoption isn't just available but preferable and it's possible? Consider how you can offer financial, or emotional, or spiritual support to adoptive families. This weekend, I think we've embraced the truth that marriage portrays the gospel. I'll tell you, adoption does the same, folks. Adoption is a gospel word. Theologically, it's the foundational concept when it comes to understanding what God's done for us. But practically, it is seen over and over as it's played out in Scripture. All the way back from when Pharaoh's daughter adopted a floating baby out of the bulrushes and named him Moses. Mordecai, who adopted his niece Esther and watched her become queen. Joseph, who adopted, in an earthly sense, our Savior. Jesus' own brother, James, who wrote pure religion and undefiled before God. And the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and the widows in their afflictions and to keep himself unspotted from the world. or the Apostle John's proclamation of, behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God. That those children would be called my kids is no special blessing, but that we would be called the sons of God is an unfathomable blessing. And what can we do except try to mirror and display and show that? When we adopt into our families, we declare to the orphaned world that there is a God who is the Father of the fatherless. We show the world what pure, undefiled religion looks like in the eyes. When we adopt into our families, we prove to the world what we believe by how we behave. We believe the word which tells us that we are adopted. We believe the word that says we're to be imitators of God, and He is a God who adopts. When we adopt, we are agreeing with God the Father that He expects more from us than to just teach children how to sing. Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, but that we will show personally we join with Jesus and they are precious in our sight as well. When we adopt into this temporary family, we proclaim to the whole world the good news that God's family is made up of an eternal family of rescued children that are called by his name.