Well, please stand as we read together in the Word of God. First of all, in the prophecy of Isaiah chapter 61. And then secondly, in Paul's letter to the Romans in the 8th chapter. Isaiah chapter 61. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, to grant to those who mourn in Zion, to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit, that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified. They shall build up the ancient ruins. They shall raise up the former devastations. They shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. Strangers shall stand and send, tend your flocks. Foreigners shall be your plow men and vine dressers. But you shall be called the priests of the Lord. They shall speak of you as the ministers of our God. You shall eat the wealth of the nations. If you have a Bible with you, then please turn with me to Romans 8. Reading from the 15th verse. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. It should, I think, be a truth engraved on the mind and heart of every Christian believer that God, our Heavenly Father, wants all of His children to know assuredly, without any trace of doubt, incontrovertibly, unambiguously, that he is their father and that they are his children. Lack of assurance is a spiritual sickness. It is never a mark of piety and certainly not of spiritual pride. What kind of father would not want his children to know that he loved them. He would be a monster. What kind of father would not want his children to know? The children of his own loins. What father would not want them to know that they were precious to him? Beloved of him? that He was theirs and that they were His. Lack of assurance is not only a spiritual sickness, it is deeply spiritually debilitating. If you are uncertain as to your relationship to the Lord, if your assurance rises and falls and ebbs and flows, It leaves you living oftentimes with clouds of uncertainty. Not knowing who you are must be one of the most debilitating experiences in life. Being uncertain of your identity must at times be bewildering and leave you almost paralyzed. God wants His children to know that they are His children and that He is their heavenly Father. And I think that when we boil it down, lack of assurance is the fruit of forgetting that all our hope and comfort in this world lies outside of ourselves. We are too prone, far too prone, to look in when we should be looking out. We are far too easily seduced by the devil himself to look for comfort and encouragement and hope within ourselves. Brothers and sisters, there isn't an atom of comfort that lies within any of you this morning. All our hope, all our comfort for this life and for the life to come lies outside of ourselves in Jesus Christ. The Reformation was almost built on two little Latin words, extra nos, outside of ourselves. That's why John Murray, in a very Murray-like phrase, said, faith is essentially extra-spectral. It's not introspective. Our comfort does not lie in the quality of our faith, but in the grace of our God. We look out, we don't look in. And Paul is writing here to believers, and he wants them to know how precious they are to God. He wants them to understand that the Holy Spirit has come in part to bear witness to their adoption as the sons and daughters of the living God. And I want simply to look very briefly, really, I'd love if we could spend time exploring the riches of these two or three verses, but in the time available to us, I want to look with you at the ministry of the Holy Spirit as the one who bears witness to our adoption in Jesus Christ. You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons. By whom we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit Himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. Let me notice first of all with you very briefly that the Spirit's witness is a concurrent witness. He does not bear witness to us. He bears witness with us. The Spirit himself bears witness with us. with our spirit, with our spirit, that we are children of God's. In other words, the Spirit's witness to us, if you like, is in vital connection with our witness to ourselves. It is a concurrent witness. He bears witness alongside, or with, in a confirmatory sense, with our own spirit. That's the first thing simply to notice. It is a concurrent witness. Secondly, the Holy Spirit's witness to our spirits, or with our spirits, is an assuring witness. He bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. Now there is an implicit presupposition in what Paul writes here, do you notice? Christians need assuring. Our hearts condemn us. I'm not speaking for myself, hopefully, this morning. Our hearts condemn us. Our sins shame us. Satan mocks us. And we can so easily have our Christian assurance knocked and even shattered. And if we only had the evidence of our own hearts, if that's all we had, we would be of all men and women the most miserable. We're not even the best judges of ourselves. We have such an inflated, self-inflated sense of who we are. I remember years ago an older minister saying to me, Ian, never forget, your congregation is never as far along as they think they are. And then he said this, and you are never as far along as you think you are. And Paul is writing knowing the tendency of even the best of God's people to question and doubt. God has not left us with the uncertainties of our own conjectures. The Holy Spirit has come to bear witness with our spirit that we are children of God. Now, of course, Paul is presupposing that we actually are children of God. That we have been brought from death to life. That we have come to Jesus Christ in self-abandoning trust. That we have laid the weight of all that we are on the sufficiency of all that He is. that we have come to Him as penitent beggars, knowing that we come to a Savior who is rich in mercy and full of grace, who turns none who come to Him away. And Paul, as a pastor, tells these Christians in Rome that the Holy Spirit has come, not only to help them put sin to death, as we saw earlier, He has come to bear witness with their spirits that they are God's children. So thirdly, we need to ask the big question, what exactly is the witness of the Spirit? Well, as I've said, Paul tells us here, it is a concurrent witness. That is, it's a witness that acts in harmony with the witness of our own spirits confirming that witness. So maybe we first need to ask, what is the witness of our own hearts to our standing before God? And I think it has a twofold character. First of all, our hearts grasp I'll say this and explain it, the syllogism of faith. What is the syllogism of faith? Simply this, the Bible tells me that whoever believes on the Lord Jesus Christ has passed from death to life. I have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, therefore I have passed from death to life. I can rest my assurance in the absolute veracity of God's truth. Whoever believes on the Lord Jesus Christ has passed from death to life. I have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, I have passed from death to life. So says the infallible, unshakeable, unbreakable Word of the living God. But then secondly, the witness of our hearts alongside the syllogism of faith is that the Word of God tells me that if anyone is in Christ, new creation. I am a new creation. Therefore, I am in Christ. The Gospel comes to change us. It comes not only to change our standing before God, It comes to transform our lives to the praise and glory of God. And surely the testimony of every Christian, the weakest, the poorest, the meanest, the most struggling is, by the grace of God, I am not what I once was. I have been born again. God has come and He has planted new desires, new impulses, new longings within my frame. I find myself no longer having a relish for the things that I once sought after. I've been given a new taste, a new relish for the things of God. If anyone is in Christ, new creation. By the mercy and grace of God, I am a new creation. Therefore, I must be in Jesus Christ. Now, without these twin realities, the syllogism of faith, and the moral transformation of our lives, we cannot be Christians. No matter how evangelically we confess our faith, If we do not heartily embrace the syllogism of faith, and if our lives do not bear testimony to the invading grace of God in the transforming power of the gospel, we cannot be Christians. But it's precisely here that we have a problem, isn't it? Our faith is variable. often weakened and constant. We fall into sin. Sin deeply troubles us. Temptation comes and causes us deep, deep pain. We hold ourselves up to the mirror of God's Word. And we feel like Isaiah when he cried out, woes me, I am undone. And brothers and sisters, it is precisely here that the Holy Spirit comes in His grace and power to give certitude or certainty to our halting conclusions. It's precisely here that He comes to give to us His seal of approval. Yes, in the midst of all your inconsistencies, in the midst of all your failures and failings, you are a son of the living God. You are a child of God. Now if I were to stop here, hopefully most of you will be sitting asking, but how does He do this? How does He do it? Read the text. Read the text. Read the text. Let me read it with you. You have not received the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father." The Spirit Himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. How does the Holy Spirit do this? Well, He does it in a very special, but at the same time in a very ordinary way. Did you notice the language Paul uses here? The Holy Spirit's witness to our adoption as the sons of God is framed in family language, in intimate, heart experiential language. Witness of the Spirit. is what enables us to cry, Abba, Father. Now, lest I go off on a tangent, Abba does not mean Daddy. No, no, no. Paul is accenting two things here regarding the Spirit's witness. First of all, he tells us it is most usually in our extremities that the Holy Spirit ministers His assuring witness. Paul uses a very striking verb here when he says, by which we cry, Abba, Father. It's the same verb used of our Lord Jesus Christ as He hung on the cross of Calvary and He cried out. In His extremity, in His physical weakness, in His emotional, unimaginable pain, In his spiritual convulsions, he cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And what Paul is telling us here is that it is in the midst of life's trials and troubles and deepest anxieties that the Holy Spirit most comes to us. It's then that we most need assuring, isn't it? when the evil one presses hard, when our circumstances are all against us, when life seems to be deluged with trial and trouble, it's then more than any other place and time that we need the assurance that I am my Beloved's and He is mine. And it is precisely as we cry, Abba Father, as we cry in our extremity, as the pain, the emotional pain, the psychological pain, the physical pain, the spiritual pain, all but overwhelms us and words are wrung from the very depths of our being. It's in that context. Not only in that context, but especially in that context. that the Spirit comes to bear witness with our spirit that we are God's children. Think of these Christians in Rome. Probably the letter is written around the time when Nero is the emperor. Christians were not only being fed to the lions, they were being tied to posts in Rome covered with oil and set ablaze to light the thoroughfares of Rome. And Paul is saying, when you cry, when you cry. There's such a realism about the Bible. That's why I run from people who tell me that when you come to Jesus Christ, life is all sweetness and light. I'm thinking, what planet are you on? What planet are you on? It was never that way with my Savior. It was never that way with his apostles in deaths often. And it's in the midst of the trials and troubles and extremities and difficulties and pain and suffering of life that the Holy Spirit comes to bear witness with our spirit that we are God's children. So it's first of all most usually in our extremities that He bears witness. But secondly, what is actually the witness that He bears? He enables us to cry in our extremity, Abba, Father. Just as the compass needle automatically points to magnetic north, no matter how you position it, so the heart of the child of God automatically points to Heavenly Father. In their extremity, the child of God will not cry out, O ineffable One, O sovereign One. These are great truths, glorious truths. at the heart of the child of God in their extremity. Can I say this? It doesn't cry out, O ineffable one. It cries out, Father, Father. I find this striking in Matthew 6. Jesus is in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount. He's ministering to his disciples. Ten times in Matthew 6. More than in the whole of the Old Testament put together, ten times Jesus tells His disciples, God is your Father. God is your Father. Maybe after the first two or three times, they're thinking, we get it. We get it, Lord. And He tells them a fourth time. And He tells them a fifth time. And he tells them a sixth time, and you're thinking, is he going to go on? Yes, I'm going to. He tells them a seventh time. And he tells them an eighth time. And he tells them a ninth time. And he tells them a tenth time. Have you got it? Have you got it? Who is God? He is your Father because of me. That's who he is. That's His new covenant name. Not that God was unknown as Father in the old covenant. Of course He wasn't. But in the new covenant, there is a glorious new disclosure of who God is in relation to those who believe in His Son. He is Father. He is Father. That is the witness of the Spirit. He bears witness with our spirit. We're often tentative in our conclusions. It seems such a great thing to say, I am a child of the living God. That is a great thing to say. You should never say that lightly. And sometimes because of our sins and our failings and our failures, we almost hesitate. Dare I, dare I even think of saying that I am a child of God, and then from deep within, almost unbidden. What is it that is wrung from the deepest recesses of our being renewed by God in Jesus Christ the Father? That's the primary relationship that the believer has with God. Both Calvin and John Owen saw this. Owen more perhaps profoundly, but Calvin more lyrically. that the apex, the omega point, the Mount Everest peak of redemption is that we are the sons of the living God. And you females here today, that includes you. Yes, you are daughters, but why does He speak here of sons? Because the sons get the inheritance. And we're all sons of God in Jesus Christ. Now let me go back to the beginning. The Holy Spirit's witness, I said, is a concurrent witness. That is, He doesn't witness to assure anyone who has no witness in themselves. He doesn't bear witness to anyone who denies the gospel syllogism. No matter how eloquently or passionately he or she might affirm the faith, if they have not closed with Jesus Christ, if they do not see Him as their only hope before God. If He is not to them the fairest of ten thousand, if His blood and righteousness are not to them the only hope before a holy God of eternal life, no matter what they say or who they are, the Holy Spirit bears no witness to them. And He doesn't bear witness to presumptuous faith, to mere confessional faith, to faith that does not manifest in some way in a transformed life. The Holy Spirit does not bear witness to death, that it is life. He bears witness to penitent faith, to trusting faith, to faith however weak, as long as it is truly faith. You see, it's easy from one perspective to say, Father. No doubt in many churches, people will have repeated rightly, as our Westminster standers encourage the Lord's Prayer, our Father who art in heaven. But what do they base that on? Is their relationship to God as Father based on the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ? For we are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ. The confessions that the Scriptures call us to confess are to be grounded and anchored in the gospel of truth. It's one thing to say, yes, God is my Father. And it's another thing to know that He is your Father because of Jesus Christ. He is God's eternal Son. We are His adopted sons. And we're only adopted into His family because of our union with Jesus Christ. And so Paul is saying to these Christians, God has not left you to your own enfeebled conjectures. He sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, Galatians 4, crying, Abba, Father. You're thinking, well, who is it that does the crying? Well, we cry, Abba, Father. But it is the Holy Spirit in us, bearing witness with us that we are God's children. He is the one who inspires the confidence, however tentative that confidence may be, to cry, Abba, Father. And you see what Paul is saying. He's saying to these Christians in Rome, God wants you to know that you are His and that He is yours. But He wants you to know that not by looking into yourselves, but by looking out to Him. The Christian life is the easiest of lives. I don't mean it isn't difficult. I don't mean it isn't hard. I don't mean it isn't painful. But it's blissfully easy. And this says, I am his, he is mine. How can you say that? Not because I've looked in and seen faith. Not because I look in and see Reformed theology. Not because I look in and see that I can quote in some measured chunks of Calvin and own by memory. Not because I look out. and see the one who loved me, gave himself for me, joined me to himself, and made me an heir together with him of the glory of God. Maybe you're here this morning and you lack assurance. Look out. You say, is that all you've got to say, preacher? Yup. Look out. Look out. You start to look in. You just get depressed. Maybe you're different from me. The devil will always want you to look in. Haven't you done well? Isn't your faith true and rich? You'll keep talking about your faith. Your faith doesn't save you. Faith gets you nowhere. You say, oh, he's preaching in an OPC church. Faith doesn't take you anywhere. Faith in Jesus Christ takes you somewhere. And it's not faith that saves you. It's the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. But what is faith? It's the gracious gift of God to receive what He has done. Everything, everything is about Him. That's why Paul prayed, preached. We preach Christ and Him crucified. Never get tired of it, Paul. Never get fed up. No. You think Paul preached the same two or three sermons everywhere he went? I don't think so. He might have preached the same text, but I'll tell you they were different sermons. Because Jesus Christ is inexhaustible. Samuel Rutherford put it simply. He is a bottomless well. Preach Christ. That's why the gospel antidote to temptation and sin is Jesus Christ. Look to Him. And as we come to His table this morning, what does the table say? Look out. Don't look in. Look out. God's done it all. And He comes to embrace us. as his children. May God bless to us his word this morning.